Lacheln
by lindsaycaz10
Summary: Set in the Christopher Nolan film series   In order to prepare for the robbery of Gotham 1st National The Joker kidnaps a bank teller with a dubious past. Joker/OC rated M for possible later chapters
1. Rousing

This is my first fan-fiction. I have no idea if I'll finish it (although I suppose I will if I get enough feedback - positive or negative, it's all constructive criticism in the end). It's set in the Christopher Nolan Films universe, and it's really more of a character study on the Joker. It's also a sad attempt at an OC. Judge me harshly.  
>I own none of these characters; Bob Kane and Bill Finger do. Christopher Nolan and the subsequent films, starring incredibly talented actors inspired me, and I don't own them either. Enjoy.<p>

. . .

CHAPTER 1: _ROUSING_

Martha Aiken is rousing now. At first there is no sound. She is coming out of it.

If she could see herself now she would see that she is not at her best. She is not the image of a beautiful woman. Her clothes, nice blouse, nice skirt, nice necklace, are torn, broken, ripped and dirty. She is not the image of a bank teller close to a promotion. Her young face is pale and sickly. Her well groomed hair hangs in dark, matted snarls. She is not the image of a woman who handles a handful of mob-men's bank accounts. She is not the image of a woman with powerful mafia connections specifically through her job at Gotham 1st National Bank.

She is the image of a woman drugged and bound and completely out of luck.

And at first . . . there is no sound.

But then, slowly, she is able to grasp on to the faint hum of subdued electricity, the tedious echoed trickle of a leaking pipe. Mumbling voices ricochet in the distance, sounding hollow, trapped between walls, buried between tiles. Her eyes are still closed. There is no real need to open them. The urgency to peek has not yet hit her.

A kind of heavy sleepiness smothers her like a blanket.

She is dizzy. It feels like she is spinning, floating in space. There is no real thought process now. No valid memory of the events that occurred beforehand. Nor is there any kind of pondering as to what may happen next. Her system, temporarily shut down, is rebooting. Her mind sways in a strange state of limbo as she herself drifts in and out of consciousness. And the voices from the neighboring rooms are getting louder, clearer. She lets the talking bring her out of it, slowly, steadily. She clings to every fuzzy word, not quite understanding that they are inaudible only because she does not have sense enough yet to pay clearer attention. She catches the bare ends of some sentences, or the beginnings of others. Nothing makes sense yet.

She lets the talking rouse her until at last her eyelids fan apart to reveal two large, glassy black pupils—doe eyes red with veins, encircled by bags. The drugs are wearing off now.

Her vision is blurry. At first she sees the world through a drunk's perception. The room is white, that much she _can_ tell, but it is also muddled and deformed. And the brightness of the lights makes her head cry out in agony. She flinches, dumbstruck. There is a bright, flickering florescence overhead. Through her watery eyes it makes the room _shine_. She forces her eyes to stay open, despite the pain. Little by little, the room morphs from something unclear and eerie to a more stable image. Gradually, she realizes she is sitting in a kind of meat locker. Muddy tiles on the floor and bloodstains on the walls. A kind of kitchen interbred with an operating room. There are knives for cutting, terrifically big butcher knives hanging above metal counters and stoves. But there are also other instruments, stranger in origin. Cow slabs, corpses as whole sides of beef are hanging on meat hooks on her far left side, out of range of her peripheral vision. The stink of rotting meat is not as pungent only because she has been breathing it in for the last however many hours. Time, at the moment, is indistinct.

The voices from next door trail away. She centers her focus on the leaky faucet—a kitchen sink with a rusty sign hanging above it. All employees must wash their hands before returning to work.

Where she is, is nowhere she has ever been.

She shifts her observations from the room and onto herself. She is becoming aware of her own body. As she regains feeling in her hands she realizes they are held tight together. Stretching her arms backward she comes to understand that they are tied behind her, tied around something hard and cold. Metallic. She is sitting in a chair. Her wrists are being squeezed together by duct tape. There's a strip over her mouth.

She is tied to a chair, and she can hear her own breathing—ragged, harsh.

There is no panic yet. Not yet. She is not fully aware enough to warrant panic. There is only a dumb curiosity, a tiny thought bubble rising slowly to the surface of her brain. A kind of _What the . . . ?_ which will eventually mutate into panic, and from there on into full blown alarm.

But for now, she is still dizzy.

She is tied to a chair in the center of this room, which is still spinning. She feels like she's on the deck of a boat on angry waters. Bit by bit, the room stops spinning, and she is awake then, thinking almost semi-clearly.

Little thoughts, like a school of hungry fish, begin to flood her mind, swimming around in a flurry of activity. The _how_ and _why_ and _where_ attack her brain. The panic arrives. She begins to breath heavily. She is tied to a chair. She is tied to a chair in this confusing room, and she is beginning to remember what happened.

Now it isn't just thoughts that flood her mind. Now the images come too. Sketchy, random, out of order. There are men, however many men, dressed in black. She is in bed. Asleep? Awake? She comes home from a late night. There are men, dressed in black, wearing clown masks. She kicks off her shoes, falls on the bed, exhausted. There are men. And they wrench her out of bed. She comes home from a late night at the bank. They had her counting bills in the vault. She cannot count how many men there are. There is not enough time before the blindfold comes over her eyes. She falls asleep in her work clothes. She cannot fight them. She is taken by surprise. She is exhausted and she falls asleep on the bed, in her work clothes, watching the news, watching some story on GCN about the infamous Batman. They are wearing clown masks, but not any kind of pleasant children's mask. She recalls a rag being hugged against her face when she starts to scream. Then some horrific stink. Like bathroom cleaner. Like the gas they used for her dental surgery last Christmas. Huge breaths of panic with this smelly rag being shoved over her nose and mouth. And then black. And then deep, dreamless sleep. And they were wearing the ugliest masks, the most grotesque _masks_. Things designed to frighten. Things designed to scare. Black, dreamless sleep. They were dressed as _clowns_.

The faucet drips distantly.

She is in this strange room, tied to a chair. She is still alive.

_But for how long_?

A brief silence after this final thought, and then instinct overcomes reason. A sudden urge to escape, to flee, grasps her. She begins to fidget, to twist, to pull. The panic overwhelms her until she is frantic. She is trying to break loose. She is screaming but the tape cuts her voice off completely. She is scanning the room wildly with her eyes and trying to call for help. She sees, from her vantage, that there are no doors here. Why are there no doors here! She tries to turn her head all the way around—maybe there's a door behind her—and she twists her neck too hard. Pain as she wrenches and yanks her ankles up and to the sides, trying to pull them off from where they are taped to the chair legs. It's useless. She is struggling madly, no noise, only her harsh ragged breaths and just then some abrupt sound makes her stop dead. Silence for a moment and then . . . She jumps as a door comes crashing open from behind her, followed by the sound of hastily approaching footsteps. She is breathing very fast now.

She jumps as a figure rounds her, and she emits a tiny yelp but the sound is muffled by the tape. She stares up, terrified, as a hand gloved in plum leather holding a pistol reaches out to trace the contours of her chin with the barrel. And for a moment she thinks she's looking up at one of those clown masks. One of those ugly, positively hideous clown masks. Only it isn't. It isn't a mask. It's make-up. Like for Halloween.

If you were seeing him bent over her, you would see that, from behind, he looks like an ordinary man. Gray pants, a bluish gray sweater, very bland, very blah, with semi-long hair that's matted, scraggly, tinted pickle green. But from the front, he is a freak. A _monster _slouched over himself, menacing, with a face covered in peeling white makeup. Somewhere in the back of her mind she recognizes that he is a man who could have at one point been considered handsome, but never now, not with the damage his face has undergone (scars at the corners of his mouth splice his face into a gaping smile), not with the way he holds himself—twisted and vulture like—over her.

She tries to swivel away from the touch of the gun. He laughs. It's the kind of high-pitched, lunatic cackle you might automatically expect from a man who looks like this one does.

She squeezes her eyes shut hard, making no noise. On the inside she's screaming, because this man in the clown make-up, with the Chelsea smile, the _Glasgow Grin_; his laugh is that of a deranged hyena, muzzle bloody, eyes wide and crazy. It's a mad man's laugh. And she is realizing her life is his life now. Any mercy worth asking for is beyond hope with an individual like this. She acknowledges this fact with a kind of cold irony.

_Karma_, she thinks. _It all comes back around in the end_.

This is her punishment. There are scars on her wrists the depth of a kitchen knife. She hangs her head while he laughs. She knows she is never going to leave this room. But she is not yet ready to accept it. She isn't crying _yet_.

She forces herself to be courageous, to look at him when she feels the barrel of the gun press into the center of her forehead. Cold sweat drips down around the metal. Her eyes center on the barrel, huge, ominous. She is close to wetting herself, but she stays strong. She is too distracted by the situation to notice he's wearing her own silver name-tag. It's pinned to his shirt, just above the right breast pocket. _Martha_. He does not look like a _Martha_.

She catches his eyes, and his gaze holds her captive in a way all the ropes and duct tape in the world never could.

Their eyes are locked and she is a mouse staring a hungry cat in the face—a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car. And her panic inexplicably dissipates, replaced by a strange kind of calm. This man has her hypnotized. His eyes are deep, cavernous. A black hole into which she feels herself falling. The eyes of a predator.

They stay like this for a moment or so, as he studies her, as she lets him study her, and a bubble seems to separate them from the rest of reality.

And then he speaks, popping the bubble and startling her, bringing her out of whatever spell she's been put under.

"Hi . . ." He says, plain and simple, very friendly.

She blinks, dumbfounded.

His voice is not like his face. It is not like his laugh, is not like what she is expecting him to sound like. His voice is small, rodent-like, raspy. The voice of any number of meek, sneaky men she's met in the past. She thinks of names like Herman or Norman or Terrance when she hears this man's high, squeaky pitch. He talks and every so often his eye twitches, and he instinctively runs his tongue along the scar at the left side of his face. He speaks and he sounds like the quiet type, the bookish hobbyist, the kind of man who never says anything, who never speaks unless spoken to. The kind of man who sits alone in a corner, away from the other people. The kind of man you maybe snicker at, maybe make fun of behind his back—that is, until he's gunning you down disgruntled-postal-worker-style in a cubicle jungle three minutes before your lunch break.

She gulps.

"Have a good sleep, did we?" He asks her, gently running the gun along her cheek.

He sounds like the cleverly unhinged, not the scary predator. She doesn't know what to make of it.

Pulling a small cellular phone out of his pocket, he says "I'm glad you're awake. I need you to make a telephone call. Mmmkay?"

She blinks at him and he sets the phone on the ground, goes to pull the tape away.

"Scream and I'll cut your tongue out." He says, almost conversationally, and her eyes grow wide. Somewhere in the back of her mind it occurs to her that his was one of the voices she was listening to through the wall when she was first coming to.

The tape comes off, a quick stinging rip, and she's dead silent, eyes on the gun aimed at her face.

He picks up the phone, dials a number, and holds it up to her face.

"So . . . You're gonna tell them you'll be gone for the next few weeks. You're gonna tell them that, pfftt I dunno, your mother died or your dog got hit by a truck or that they found a lump during your last examination. Whatever. You're gonna tell them something and you're gonna make it sound convincing. Or else—" He giggles and clicks the hammer of the gun backward, ready, "—I'm gonna blow your head clean off your shoulders. Please and thank you." He adds with a twitch and a lick.

She nods grimly and listens to the ringing on the other end of the line until somebody picks up. It's her manager, Mr. Dominick. The man with scars has phoned the 1st National Bank of Gotham. The steadiness of her own voice surprises them both.

"Hello, Mr. Dominick." She says flatly, "I'm sorry, but I am unable to come in today. I think I've caught something. A bug. Maybe the flu. I've been . . . vomiting all morning."

Mr. Dominick mumbles his disappointment on the other end of the line.

"I know. I apologize, Mr. Dominick, for the late notice." She replies, sounding genuinely sorry. "But what can I do? I'm sick. I'm never sick, sir."

More mumbling from Mr. Dominick.

"Yes, sir. I'll see the doctor tomorrow, if I can get out of bed." She lies, all the while staring at the gun. "Yes, sir. You can send me the Smith's account information if you like, but I can't promise I'll be able to get to it this week. . . Yes, yes sir. I understand. I should be all right again by next Monday, I think." She really is unsure. "Yes, sir. I don't mind using my accumulated sick days and vacation time. It's probably nothing."

The last of Mr. Dominick's mumbling.

"Thank you, sir, I'll try. Have a good day."

The scarred man snaps the phone shut, disconnecting her from Mr. Dominick. A wide grin dawns across his chapped lips.

"And the Academy Award goes to—_Martha Aiken_! Fabulous, fabulous!"

She breaths a small sigh of relief when he removes the gun from her forehead and begins clapping eccentrically.

"You know you—you could be an actress, Miss Aiken. You really could be." And to her surprise he sounds authentically impressed. He stands to leave, saying "Okey dokey. That's all for now. I'll be back later, Miss Aiken. Bye . . ."

He goes to walk away, a hop and skip to his gait, and she calls after him.

"Wait."

He stops and turns back to face her, looking impatient.

"I just . . . wanted to know," She begins timidly, "I'm your, eh, hostage . . . Right?"

Sarcastically: "No, you're my goldfish. I needed a new one—the other died. Went to heaven when I flushed him down the toilet bowl."

He snickers cruelly.

She nods. "I was only wondering if . . . um, if . . ." She can't bring herself to say it. He sighs angrily while she gathers herself. "This—This isn't some money situation is it. You're not in this for a ransom, are you . . . This is like a—a Ted Bundy situation." She says, struggling to keep her eyes from watering. "Where sooner or later it'll be me swinging from one of these meat-hooks, isn't it."

He cocks his head to one side, grinning slyly. "What makes you say that, Miss Aiken—_Martha_?"

She gulps again. Her throat is very dry.

"Because," She says, voice on the verge of cracking. "Because I could identify you in a police line-up if you let me go. Even with the make-up, I could still give a halfway decent description of you to . . . to the police."

_And because you seem like the serial-killer type_, she neglects to add.

"Ah, yes, well," he shrugs, "How do you know I don't _want_ you to tell people who I am?"

This throws her off, and for a moment she cannot think of anything more to say. The man with the cut-scar smile takes this small gap in their conversation as an opportunity to leave and does so, bowing beforehand like a merry court jester and then practically dancing out of the room—humming a little tune as he goes (very, very peculiar man). And once again she is left alone in the meat locker, pondering her fate with the lack of confirmation he left her, and eventually breaking down when she recognizes that, either way she looks at it (sensibly, insensibly), it will not end well for her.


	2. Makeup

CHAPTER 2: _MAKE-UP_

Putting the make-up on, for him, is less of a process and more of a ritual. It is like prayer to a monk. Required (to him and him alone, for some bizarre, unexplainable reason) and strangely fulfilling.

He stands at the mirror, swaying to the music of Beethoven. The speakers jut out of the abandoned delicatessen walls and fill the place with the vicious, booming blare of the 9nth Symphony. He hears it remarkably well, even while in the bathroom at the sink. He is a man not necessarily of planning, but organization. Not necessarily of routine, but of rite. A list-maker, if you will. And when it's time for the putting on of the make-up, it's _always_ Beethoven's 9nth.

And here the 9nth resounds with a clamorous authority. If the delicatessen weren't in a relatively bad part of Gotham, a ghetto in the Narrows only half full and occupied by crack-addicts and drug dealers, somebody might complain about the noise. But no. The music bothers not a soul. It is part of his universe, and it is building, a heavenly ascent, to it's climax—which, for him, will be like an orgasm when he hears it. And he stands at the mirror with his eyes shut, smearing old white stage make-up over his cheeks, his lips, his eye sockets, his scars, and bliss comes to him. It fills his body with an electric vigor, and his mind comes alive with such horrific, _beautiful_ images. A woman fat enough to be mistaken for a walrus struggling to breath as her own body slowly suffocates her, a man as road kill in the gutter of an intercity street, two brothers as soldiers stabbing at each other with bayonets, a little boy dying of AIDS in a world that is dark and monstrous and bittersweet. This is his sick, deranged enlightenment. This high is better than that which any drug, invented or discovered, could ever produce. He wipes the white paint across his forehead and quivers as he feels it coat his skin. Lovely. Simply heaven.

Every now and again he sneaks a peek at the bicycle card lying on the porcelain basin of the sink. He still to this day has no idea how the little thing came to inspire his newfound guise. In that deck of fifty it was the joker card that found him best. He's had other personas, of course. That which he calls _The Joker_ is only his current identity. At the moment, this one seems to satisfy him, but he remembers dressing up in his younger years even, as _The Red Hood_. How he would sneak out at night and drape that lovely red ski-mask over his boyish face and go shop-crashing and convenience store robbing. Sometimes he wouldn't do it for the money. Sometimes he would do it just for the sheer thrill of smashing a brick through a window and burning the store up from the inside, money and all. Sometimes he would do it just to see the fear in the eyes of the clerk at the counter as he pointed his pistol at their face. And he remembers how he would come away afterward and feel so _alive_. It would ware off eventually, it always did, but in those few moments just after it had taken place, after he had wrecked a part of the sanity of the planet, he would be flying higher than a rocket ship to Mars.

He would use this, does use this, as his drug because he despises narcotics. His opinion is, only the truly pathetic use narcotics. He is particularly spiteful of the rich suburban kids who use narcotics because they are bored with their video games and several hundred channels of cable TV. He feels they, the bored, are not investing their time accurately. He feels that they could be causing so much more _damage_, and not just to themselves. With the poor it is different, yes, but not too different. He recognizes that at least the poor have a somewhat plausible excuse for drowning their sorrows or pumping their veins full of the poison that makes them see God and all his holy angels playing divine music on harps and trumpets. The poor are down and out, and so what's wrong with using a little bit to escape? Everybody needs a little escapism every once and a while. Sometimes, albeit rarely, he takes cats with collars, the ones he finds wandering around outside, and puts them in the microwave in the kitchen until the popping noises send him over the edge and off the planet. Escapism, plain and simple. But he dislikes those poor people who do drugs constantly. He does not like the idea of hiding from the harshness of the world. He believes the concept of chaos should be accepted. Embraced, even, with open arms and cleared heads.

And as for alcohol . . . Alcohol he hates with a fiery passion that equals his lust for the violently macabre. The reason he so deeply hates alcohol is his father.

He stops dead in the middle of applying his lipstick (bright red like blood), eyes parting just a crack so that he can view himself in the mirror.

Part of the reason he wore the ski mask, wears the make up now, donned all the other costumes and masks and the like, is because he looks like his father.

Unable to stand this fact, and unwilling to break another mirror (the other three in the bathroom are badly smashed and shattered), he squeezes his eyes shut tightly and takes in a deep, calming breath. He focuses on the music. On the violent images. On their beauty, determined to forget how uncannily similar his own features are to his old man's.

The ski mask was his first attempt, and the make-up his most recent. But the scars that line his cheeks, they were his _most desperate_. They were his first broken mirror, also. Sitting alone in that padded little cell, swimming in an un-done strait-jacket, seething as he slipped the blade of glass into his cheek and feeling that moment of exciting tension just before he yanked backward, carving a 'happy little grin' onto his somber, ailing face. And _oh_, how the blood came then. And he tries to recreate it now in the bathroom of the delicatessen, mashing the lipstick point over the scars, imagining himself carving his face up all over again, picturing the liquid red trickling across his mouth and remembering the warmth running down his chin and the beautiful release it brought and the _taste in his mouth the taste the taste of blooooood_.

Outside, the music is raging.

Sooner or later he will find his father in his face again, and the make-up and scars will be unable to effect his not seeing it, and he will find something new. But for now, for now he is all bliss and joy and beautiful violent energy. He comes crashing out of the bathroom, make-up still wet on his ears and nose, to the thunderous conclusion of the 9nth. And he's singing, screaming, laughing to it as it ends. And the other men sitting in the cob-web ridden dining section look up from their card games and stare at him from behind their own masks and give their leader their undivided attention, an audience for which he will gladly perform.

He dances away as the music fades, off through the kitchen and toward the back rooms, where the meat-locker is. He's headed to check up on Martha Aiken, to 'speak with her'—as is the first step on the crumpled piece of notebook paper in his left pocket, the one with _THE MASTER PLAN_ written in big bold magic marker at the top.


	3. Dinner Guest

CHAPTER 3: _DINNER GUEST_

Time does not exist in the meat locker. Martha sees no clocks on the wall, and her watch is behind her, covered in silver duct tape. She cannot tell when last the man in the make-up, the man with the _scars_ left her, if only an hour or so has passed from then or if it has been longer. It feels like he's been gone for an eternity, but even so, she has some vague concept of the time thanks to the music echoing through the walls. Beethoven. But even that seems to flow on forever in this place. If she could hear her watch she might try to count the ticking, but she knows even this attempt at configuring the time would fail. She would not be able to focus on the numbers. Her mind is plagued by paranoia and fear. These feelings become thoughts, and these thoughts distract and unsettle her deeply. It's not what she knows, it's what she doesn't know that's wrecking her up inside. All the little questions. Will he kill me? Will he come back? Will he starve me? Will he rape me? How long will I stay here? Will he let me go? When will he let me go? Why? _Why am I here_?

She has given up on struggling to get loose. She knows the man in the make-up is clever and dangerous. That she could sense right when she first laid eyes on him. She has given up on the thought of escape and all that's left to eat away at her mind are the bad thoughts, the paranoid thoughts, the thoughts of dismay and apprehension. Slowly, she is loosing hope. She knows, as should any smart woman like herself, that her phone call to Mr. Dominick ultimately sealed her doom. It has made it so that her absence in the outside world is explainable, and therefore she recognizes the high chance that nobody will come looking for her out of curiosity. At least nobody from work. As for her family, all she has to count on is her mother. _Perhaps_, she thinks, _perhaps there is a chance she will come looking for me._ _Perhaps there is a chance she will get worried and send the police to my home, and they'll see that there was a definite struggle—unless he had the men in masks clean up afterward. He probably did. But even so, perhaps there is still a chance; a slim ray of hope that I will get through this, get out of this alive._

This semi uplifting thought is lost on her when the door behind her opens abruptly with a loud crash. She jumps again, and being un-gagged from their previous encounter, this time the man in make-up hears her tiny yelp. He rounds her and she can see he has re-applied his make-up, she can tell from its brighter appearance in comparison with the skin just under his jaw-line. His expression denotes a kind of energetic glee. He too sees a change in _her_ face. Her mascara has run down the outside of her nose and inside of her cheeks, dried after her breakdown from before. He can tell she's been bawling like a little girl. He can see he's made a lasting impression on her—or at least the situation has.

Without a word he bends over and begins to untie her ankles from the chair. At one point he withdraws a kind of pocketknife from the inside of his vest and starts to cut at the tape. He says nothing, and she says nothing. She only looks down blankly, curious. Afterward he backs quickly away, expecting her to kick at him. She doesn't. She only stares up at him like a dumb dog and watches as he rounds her again.

He bends down to face her hands and speaks to her from behind.

"I'll do your hands now, Miss Aiken. You try to run—" suddenly she feels the barrel of the gun again, this time wedged between her shoulder blades, "—and kablamo. Got it?"

She gives a small nod and waits until her hands are free. Slowly, she brings them around to rest in her lap, feeling the ache of the muscles and hearing the cracks of the swollen joints. They were in the wrong position for too long, and now her arms feel terribly heavy and sore.

He rounds her yet again, and then his grinning yellow teeth are inches from her nose. His breath, strangely, is not as stale as she expected it to be.

"How about some dinner?" He chimes with a twitch of his left eye.

And without another word he hauls her to her feet in one grand yanking motion. For a moment she's a wobbly toddler just learning how to walk. Her feet are bare and there are rips in her stockings. Her knees tingle. She falls into him, groggy from having been in a sitting position for so long. Her face comes up against his chest and she sniffs at his cologne. She is close to his face—out of habit his tongue darts out to lick the chapped edge of his mouth, prodding the scar tissue. She shivers. He holds her to him, neither annoyed nor pleased, until finally she is able to regain her balance. She gives him an apologetic look and he leads her out of the meat locker. At one point she opens her mouth to speak but stops, lips parted halfway, and decides against it. She feels like a lamb being lead to the slaughter, and she notices now that, as she's standing beside him comparatively, he isn't as big as she originally through he was. He somehow seemed taller, more intimidating when she was tied to the chair and he was looming over her, but now she sees that he is a rather pathetic looking specimen overall. Skinny, moderate height, fidgety—crawling in his own skin. But still, he gives off an air of supremacy, of slight intimidation. Still that insane postal-worker feel.

They walk a ways, down a darkened corridor where the wallpaper is ripped and the ceiling holds wet mold spots from the leaky pipes behind it. Past locked doors, past open ones, although she can't see what's in them (they're walking by too quickly). He brings her into the dinning area of what appears to have once been a delicatessen. She looks around, surprised, and sees the cobwebs, the windows covered up with plywood. The two big doors are padded with red satin, and locked at the center with a deadbolt. She sniffs at the air and the smell of old cigarette smoke fills her nostrils. The place is rotting, decrepit, yet owning a kind of dark and sinister charm. Rather similar to the scarred man's own strange physique.

The room is filled with music. Not Beethoven now, but the calmer, more waltz-oriented Strauss. Relaxing dinner music. There are small wooden tables set up around the room, and booths next to the plywood windows. And sitting all around are the men, maybe eighteen in all, wearing clown masks, ski masks, some with no masks whatsoever. Some of them are playing card games, others are reading old newspaper pages.

"Gentlemen," He calls out gleefully over the music, and again the men halt in their activity and direct their attention to him. "Gentlemen, this is Miss Aiken. She'll be joining us for dinner tonight."

The men grunt their replies and return to their own little world.

She looks around again, trying to see an uncovered window. Is it still night out? It doesn't feel like night. She stands silent and confused. Is it the same night she was kidnapped, or is this farther on, tomorrow night, the night after? Time does not exist in this place. Briefly, she shuts her eyes. She is weary.

He leads her over to a booth by the wall and sits her on the left side, afterward taking a seat across from her, gun now pointed at her chest.

A moment of silence.

"Well," He begins, smirking proudly. "This is my, eh, this is my _pad_. Whadduya think?"

She looks around again, looks at him, tries to force a smile. It's small and fleeting. He shrugs.

"Yeah, well, it suits the purpose. I'm thinking of upgrading, though. Remodeling, as it were. Ought to have a lot of cash coming to me soon. Me and the boys here." He explains, gesturing to the men in masks. "Not that all the money will go to remodeling. As you can tell from my face, I'm not that vain over that which, uh, describes me visually. I don't ask for a lot. Simplicity, that's the key. Simplicity and necessity, really. And besides, money is the route of all evil, isn't that right, Miss Aiken?"

She says nothing. It's all nonsense to her. He leans back, stretches.

"You look hungry." He says offhandedly, and it's true—she is becoming aware of her stomach's emptiness. She can not remember when last she ate. "Food's coming. Don't worry. But in the meantime, we might as well get down to business."

She feels little in the cushioned seat of the booth. The table's been raised too high. It dwarfs her.

"You're probably wondering why you're here." He begins stiffly.

She gives no reply.

"Well, Miss Aiken, Martha—might as well drop the formalities, I'm a pretty informal guy, as you can see." He says, leaning in toward her, "The fact of the matter is, I've been wanting to open up an account at Gotham 1st National, your work place isn't it, for some time. Several accounts, as a matter of fact."

Some of the men, listening in on what he's been saying, chuckle quietly at the hidden meaning behind their boss's comment.

"I need you to tell me everything that you can about how the place works, Martha. My men and I, we're real curious about Gotham 1st National." He mimics an excited child. "We think banks are just neat-o, don't we fellows!"

He laughs openly, as do some of the other men. She doesn't. Her tongue feels heavy, dry, a dead thing taking up space in her mouth. All of this, this conversation, this situation, feels so unreal to her. It makes her question her own sanity. _Am I still unconscious? Is this all a dream? Are we really talking here now, he and I?_ It doesn't seem real.

She starts to feel a slight twinge of anger.

_This? THIS is what I'm hear for? The fucking BANK?_

"Any who," He continues, "I'm just wanting to know some things about the place. And seeing how you're next in line to be assistant manager there, I'm guessing you know just about everything. Of course, it's not the little things I'm interested in. It's the big things that concern me, Martha. I'm a meticulous man. Not a planner, per say, but cautious. Caution is a sign of intelligence, wouldn't you say? _Organization_ is a sign of intelligence."

Her brow furrows again. She's terribly perplexed by all of this.

"How many security guards, Martha? I need to know what their shifts are, and I need to know how many tellers there are, too. And what _their_ shifts are, where all the emergency fire exits are, the fire alarms, the sprinkler system, how to activate—or deactivate—the silent alarm, not to mention the combination to the vault, all that technical jazz." he finishes, licking the inside corner of his mouth.

A beat.

"Who are you?" She says, monotone.

He smiles furtively, pulls something out of his inner breast pocket, flings it across the table at her. She flinches back only to see that he's tossed her a simple playing card.

"My card." He announces.

She looks down at it. On the surface of the card is the printed picture of a juggling jester, grinning merrily. Her brow wrinkles in confusion. _A joker card?_

"A – what? A card? You're a—"

He waves his hand, silencing her.

"They call me The Joker." And he grins, Chelsea-scars stretching hideous.

"And you're a . . . You're a . . . a _bank robber_?" She finally blurts.

"_No_." He says, eyes flashing dangerously. "I am _not_ just a bank robber."

She shakes her head quickly.

"I'm sorry. I-I didn't mean—"

Before she can say anything more somebody's at the front of the delicatessen, rapping on the doors quite loudly.

"Ah, food's here. Excellent." He whispers, winking at her. "I'll give ya dinner and a show, how 'bout that, eh Martha?"

He snaps his fingers once (glove-less and naked from the ritual of the make-up), and without hesitation two of the goons sitting nearest to the door rise and unlock the deadbolt. Martha watches as a third goon, holding three or four large pizza boxes, struts in casually. Right away the goon with the pizzas comes quickly to the table where she and The Joker are sitting, and sets the food down in front of him like a man offering gold to a God. The Joker sniffs, looks at his watch, and grimaces.

"Hmmm . . ." He grumbles, eyes sly and dangerous. "You—You are late, my friend. That's what _you_ are. You're a late lilly, yuhumn."

The goon watches nervously as he opens one of the boxes, removes a slice (pepperoni with anchovies) and bites into it. Martha wants to gag, watching his attempts to chew with the scars—such disgusting smacking noises. After a moment he spits the pizza back out of his mouth, exclaiming "Aw, that's too bad! It's _cold_."

And she watches, horror-struck, as he shoots the goon through the heart, making her scream openly. She sees the goon land on the floor in a dead heap. It happens in slow motion, and she takes all of the intensity of the act in, and then she's backing away, scrambling madly away out of instinct, balling herself up at the farthest interior of the cushioned seat, clawing at the wall, shaking her head, trying not to let herself look at the blood. It isn't even the blood that bothers her. It isn't that she's seen the goon die, necessarily. Martha has seen a man die before—die in a much more sinister fashion. And she works for Gotham's scum, so it isn't, for her, that she is unaccustomed to the idea of witnessing such acts of violence. It is not seeing the goon die that does it for Martha. Rather, it is the unexpectedness with which the goon's life is suddenly and senselessly cut short that throws her into a wild tantrum of short, piercing screams.

It is the unexpectedness combined with the sudden realization—the confirmation that, yes, her situation is indeed very serious and, yes, the man she is sitting with is indeed a very sick, mad man.

With one sudden explosion of gunfire the awareness of these facts, the ones over which she has been unsure and pondering — _worrying_ — over hit her, and she is unable to contain herself. All of the emotions that have been building up within her mind these last however many hours, contained throughout the majority of them, are now spilling out unchecked. And despite her fear and concern over what this mad man with his gun and his posse will do to her for screaming like this, she simply cannot help it. She lets go with her harsh, boisterous screams, one after another, in between huge panic breaths.

Everything in the dinning room is dead silent except for her wailing. She's got her shaking hand held half over her mouth as she starts dry heaving, and her eyes are shut _so tight_, and the tears are streaming down her cheeks in a constant torrent.

And suddenly the scarred man is laughing. He's staring down at the body of the goon and he's having a giggle fit. A reaction that is, respectfully, the complete opposite of Martha's.

He turns to Martha. He's laughing so hard he is barely able to address her.

"H-He—ah ha—I lied. I—pffft—I lied."

He holds a slice of pizza up to her, still laughing.

"I lied. It isn't really—It isn't _really_ c-cold!" And he bursts out laughing again. "Pffwhahahahah!"

Martha doesn't want to be here. She sits crumpled up into herself, hugging her knees to her chest, cradling her head in her hands, rocking back and forth, thinking _This isn't happening, this isn't happening, this isn't happening . ._ _._

"What's the matter?" Asks The Joker, calming down slightly. "Don't you want any dinner?"

He pushes the slice of pizza out toward her face.

Martha, sniffling, tries to speak but finds she can only burble a few incoherent word fragments.

"Oh." He says, suddenly disappointed. "Well fine then." And he throws the slice to the floor, whereas the men begin to rise around them and approach the table like hungry dogs. Only after the alpha has eaten are the other pack members ever allowed to eat, and so they do, taking the boxes with them as they go and serving off another table—talking amongst themselves with awkward quietness, making sure not to bother their boss and the crazy woman he's brought into the dinning room as his dinner guest.

And Martha is still crying. Nearer to hyperventilating now.

Suddenly he's on the other side of the table, invading her space, making her feel trapped. She lashes out, trying to kick at him, no longer caring that he's armed and insane and willing to kill over food that isn't even cold. All she cares about is bruising that ugly, hideous face. If she's going to die, she figures she might as well give him something to remember her by. It takes some time and some strength, but ultimately (being that he is both bigger, stronger, and at the moment, slightly more level-headed—although not by much—then she is) he is able to restrain her and quiet her down.

He grabs hold of her wrists to stop her from trying to strike him.

"Hey, hey, _hey_," He growls, and then she's staring into those eyes again, lost in the void of blackness, and the hypnotism of his glare overtakes her and she becomes still. "Come on, come on. Adda girl, there we go." He whispers, leaning in close to her, wrapping his arms around her in a half-constricting, half-comforting hug. "I know. I know this is difficult, but, hey, hey, listen to me—listen—look at me. Hey."

She's trying to look away, trying to release herself from the grip of his eyes. He grasps her chin hard, pulling her face close to his. They are mere centimeters away from one another now, and she feels so distant from the rest of the world.

"Listen to me. Look at me. Look—_Look. At. Me. _There now. That's better." He says in a soft, reassuring tone of voice. "Now, I know this is difficult, but trust me, if you just cooperate I promise, all of this, it will all be over with nice and quick and easy. Just like a—a shot at the doctor's. It'll be over with before you know it. I'm a man of my word, Martha. You can trust me. Now take a deep breath—that's it—in . . . and out . . ."

She exhales shakily and asks with a quivering voice, "A-Are you going to k-k-kill me?"

"That would be a stupid thing to do. Kill you _now._ I need you, Martha." He replies. "I mean, sure, I _could_ kill you. I _could_ go through the trouble of tracking down another bank official, kidnapping them, tying them up in the back room, and shooting one of my men in front of them to prove the severity of the situation. But frankly, I'm feeling lazy, and so I'd rather not have to go through all that again."

She shudders.

"I think you're making a mountain out of mole-hill here, Martha. I think it's a little rude to just _assume_ that, because I like to blast a couple holes in the pizza delivery freak, and that because I look a little less _normal_ than usual, I'm going to eventually tear you to pieces too. I'm not some rabid thing, Martha. I'm actually a pretty sensible guy. And when you assume things like that, Martha, you gotta understand it hurts my feelings. You know what they say? Never assume things because you make an _ass_ out of _u_ and _me_ both. Get it?"

He chuckles, she doesn't. He continues.

"Now, I know you're anxious about what's going to happen, but as I said, I'm a man of my word. I won't hurt you unless, or until, I have to." He says, voice low. "It would put my mind at ease, don't ya know it, if you would just stop worrying so much. It would really cool me down inside if I knew there would be no more of these little panic attacks. I would like to count on your cooperation. Really, that's all I'm asking for, Martha. Just a little cooperation. A little trust. Not a huge request, is it?"

Somehow, his words are calming her down.

"Oh, and another thing, Martha. I can understand you being anxious about the possibilities of this little scenario. It's pretty understandable. Hell, who wouldn't be concerned over the fact that they're being held captive by somebody like me? However, it's still a little impolite. To me, anyway, it seems impolite. So my advice to you is this—stop focusing on what _might_ occur." He tells her coolly, waving the gun in front of her face. "Better to live in the present during an, uh, situation like this. Besides, judging from the scars on your arms, I doubt the prospect of death is what you're really afraid of. I think it's the prospect of not knowing that's _really_ getting you down. So you're just going to have to trust in me, as, mmmmm, hard as that might sound . . ."

She gawks at him, unbelieving of his callousness.

"Oh yes, I saw your scars, Martha." He remarks casually. "Did you think I wouldn't notice? I was actually a little pleased to find out that _that_ was the kind of woman I was going to get to interact with. Somebody who's well aware of the darkness in this world. Somebody who's been touched by it, like me." And he grins wide, cracked, red lips stretching across his face.

His words echo in her head. They seem hollow.

"Anyway . . ." He finishes, releasing her from his hug and leaning away gingerly, "What I'm trying to say is this; until I can organize a heist on Gotham 1st National, one that can be well executed by a total of five men, and one that will lead to a _successful_ outcome, you'll stay alive. Does that bring you any relief?"

"That's suicide." She squeaks, petrified. He looks at her quickly, seemingly both surprised to here her speak and annoyed by what's she's said.

"Don't you know who you're stealing from?" She continues. "Gotham 1st National has over fifty different illegal accounts. The police will find you at the bottom of the river if you try to pull a stunt like that. It's _insane_."

"Exactly." He says, grinning again.

"It's –" She gropes for a better word, "It's crazy." She finally whispers, on the verge of crying again.

"Crazy is as crazy does, ma'am."

"But—But you'll never be able to do it!"

"Optimism, Martha. Keep a positive prospective on life. I'll be able to do it because you will have given me your complete cooperation. Yes?"

"Please just let me go." She pleads, starting to cry again. "You can do another bank, an easier one. I won't tell anybody, I promise. Only p-please let me go."

"No can do, Martha." He says, stretching his arms over his head, yawning. "Hitting Gotham 1st National, it's an essential part of my overall plan, as a matter of fact. So, yeah, can't let you go quite yet."

"Fine! I'll help you, I swear—I'll be cooperative and everything! Only please don't k-kill me afterward. _Please_. I know you're going to. You said for me to t-tell them I would only be gone for a little while, but I j-j-just know you're—you're going to kill me!" She sobs hysterically. "Please tell me that you're not going to kill me. B-Because I know it. I know you will!"

"Now—Now did I say that? Is that what I said? Come on, Martha." He chides. "Really. I mean it now. Stop being such a worry-wart. It's annoying. You should try to be a little less . . . _serious_." And he says this last word in a deep, darkening tone.

"But I know you'll kill me afterward." She tells him quietly, trying her best to calm down. "I know it because it's what I deserve. Don't you get it? It's what I deserve!" And she starts bawling even harder then.

He rolls his eyes and there is a moment where their conversation drops. Meanwhile the goons in the dinning area are finishing off what's left of the pizza.

"Say!" He chirps abruptly, pointing the gun at the side of his cheek. "I don't suppose you'd like to know how I got these scars, would you?"

She says nothing, shakes her head. She wants this all to go away now.

"You don't care?" He says, pretending to well up. "Oh! I'm _hurt_, Martha. I'm—I mean really. That's just rude. Somebody ought to teach you some manners."

"I j-just wanna go back to my room now." She whimpers, beaten. "Please. Please, let me go b-back to my . . . to m-my room."

"_Your room_." He repeats, giggling. "You mean the meat locker?"

"Yes. Y-Yes. Please." She begs.

"What's the matter? Don't you like my company?" He asks, eyes narrowing.

"I—I—I'm just tired. I'm just t-tired, please."

"Well then you'll want a bed, not a chair. Am I wrong?"

She gurgles something inaudible.

"I think we can do a little better than that. Tell you what, Martha. You want confirmation, yes? I can tell."

He's very close to her now.

He hisses "I . . . just . . . _hate_ people who want confirmation, Martha. I hate 'em. Just. Hate. Them . . . _Planners_. That's what they are, and I hate planners. I hate the way they function. They need to know everything in advance—which isn't to say I'm against being organized. There's a difference. People who are organized, prepared, most of the time, can at least _accept_ the possibility that something might go wrong." He explains. "But planners—planners are weaklings. They think they were born un-gifted psychics. Always wanting to know exactly how things will turn out. Always wanting confirmation, affirmation. I ask you—where's the fun in that? Where's the _surprise_?"

"I—I w-want—" She tries.

"To go back to your room!" He snaps cheerfully. "Well then confirm! Will you cooperate for me, even not knowing what will happen to you once I've gotten everything I need out of you?"

She nods hastily. She can't take much more of this.

"Ah, so you _are_ going to keep being cooperative, are you? Yes. Yes you are. For your own sake, you had better, Martha." He hisses. "That's good. Confirmation! There it is, out in the open. And I'll confirm that, for the time being, so long as you cooperate, you'll be treated with respect."

This last word was accompanied by a pair of air quotations that make Martha's heart sink.

"Oh! Duya know what?" He adds with absurdly phony excitement. "I know, I know, I've got it. You can stay with me—in my office from now on. Got a nice big fold-out couch, Martha. Perfect for a tired woman like yourself."

Her eyes grow wide with terror. He's enjoying every minuet of this torture.

"And you can tell me all about the bank. How 'bout that, Martha? Sound good to you?"

She shuts her eyes, shakes her head, trying to keep control over herself. She wants to run screaming from the room but she's well aware of the fact that she can't.

And he says in a low whisper, "Maybe you'll change your mind, hummm. About wanting to hear about my scars, too. And who knows. Maybe we can swap stories. I tell you about my scars, you tell me about yours. And in the end, you'll learn to be a little stronger when the realization dawns on you—that, even though you'd like to, you can't control everything around you. No matter how much effort you put into planning, there's always going to be . . . something . . . you couldn't account for. Like me. I'm the one thing you didn't count on, Martha. I was the unexpected _chaotic element_ in your equation, wasn't I?"

He leans in close again, looking like he could kiss her.

"_Wasn't I?_" He jeers, pushing the gun into her temple and then quickly removing it. He breaths in deeply, familiarizing himself with her scent, with her fear, like an animal. "I'm an agent of chaos, you know." He tells her ecstatically, eye twitching.

She cries, lost to fate, and gradually he gets up, starts laughing again, and walks away—leaving her sitting there to dwell on the terrible situation she is now totally sure she can not get out of, with the body of a dead man at the end of the table.

The lack of confirmation, it leaves her horrified. _He_ leaves her horrified, alone in the booth, his words—all of them true, all of them sensible, reasonable, _accurate_—resounding like echoed gun fire in her head.

The man with the hideous scars was spot on about her.

Her life, even the evil deeds, had all been perfectly thought out so that she was certain of the outcome ahead of time. And this was the first instance where it wasn't happening that way. And it was killing her from the inside out, the fact that the control, for once in her life, belonged to somebody else.

To the man with the scars who named himself after a playing card, the monster who had seen through her from the beginning, and knowing this was the scariest thought of all for her.


	4. Business

CHAPTER 4: _BUSINESS_

Outside the delicatessen the streets are flooding. It's raining in the Narrows. The day is a dreary one.

Inside, Martha Aiken lies in the fetal position on a fold-out couch, shivering beneath a large patchwork quilt. She occupies what was once a wine cellar, what is now The Joker's 'office'. There are no windows, but she can still hear the rain coming down, somehow. The dust clogs her senses, and she is plagued by the abundance of spider webs in the corners.

Strange random items coat the wine cellar walls and fill up the old wine-shelves, items that describe the mentality of The Joker perfectly. There are old strange stage masks, hammers, knives—all manner of sharp-bladed knives—various other kinds of weapons, a coyote skull, some dead rats nailed to a support beam, old black-and-white pictures of nobody in particular (some in frames, some stapled to the ceiling, some cut and some ripped out of magazines), an odd assembly of clothing hung in a kind of closet that more-so resembles a hole chopped into the cement wall by an axe or a sledge hammer, and strange, surreal paintings of gutted women with pig's heads and howling mouths for stomachs. Martha wonders if the scarred man, The Joker, painted these himself. Either way, they frighten her. She tries not to look at them.

But the strangest things in the room are the odd assortment of newspaper clippings splayed out across the surface of the desk facing the opposite wall. A series of articles all about the Batman, ones dating back to the year he arrived in Gotham. She wonders if her captor has an obsession. She has looked at these articles in her spare time (for, like the spider webs, there is an abundance of them as well), read them over once or twice without moving them (she dares not touch them), and she's seen his handwriting and doodles in the margins of some. She does not touch the desk at all. She keeps her hands to herself like with most of the rest of the items found in the wine cellar. She knows that he has the positions of most of the things there memorized. No matter how scattered and messy it all may look to her, somehow he can sense when things have been disturbed. Martha Aiken discovered this when he first brought her into his office, and found the consequences most terrifying.

The Joker had locked her in for the night, this was after her show of hysterics in the dinning room. He had locked her in, pushing the key under the door from the outside.

"The door opens from the outside only." He had explained to her from the other side of the cellar door. "Haven't the slightest idea why . . . Must've been some pretty expensive wine down here, I suppose. Meh. At any rate, I figured you might feel a tad uncomfortable if, say, I or one of my men had access to this place while you were trying to sleep. So, naturally, I figured maybe you'd feel a little easier if _you_ were the one in control. However, Martha, you oughta know something else. My little room I'm offering up to you, well, it's kinda sorta wired to blow."

And indeed it had been. She'd found several drums of gasoline near the far back wall where he'd told her to go looking, all of them attached to a kind of blinking clock-like mechanism. And she had believed him when he had gone on to say he had the detonation remote with him on the other side.

"If, in the morning," He had warned her, "I come a'knockin' and you don't slide that key back, I'll blow you into itsy bitsy little pieces, Martha. Understand?"

"Yes." Had been her grave reply.

"Excellent. Nighty-night, then!" And off he'd gone, his footsteps climbing up the loose wooden-step stairs until she could no longer here them with her ear pressed to the door.

There are odd post-it notes and lists on lined paper covering the floor. Signs of The Joker's attempts to be organized. Being alone, and finding herself curious during that first night, she unknowingly disturbed these papers. She picked up a list, read it (half the things on it were written so sloppily she could barely make them out), and set it back down. When next The Joker entered in to check on her, carrying a small tray of food, and noticed this small difference, he became enraged—sending the tray flying and making threats of no more food and the like.

Approaching her with narrow eyes, he had grabbed her by the wrist, and said in a low, dangerous whisper "If you _ever_ touch anything in this room again, I'll keep the room key and crush your head in with a hammer while you sleep, mmmkay . . ."

Needless to say, Martha Aiken has not slept well since then. But she has, at least, been eating semi-decently. Each day (a number have gone by thus far—although she can not tell how many) The Joker comes to the door, knocking a particular knock that she is certain must be some strange take on Shave And A Haircut, and she obediently slides the key under for him. And each time he waltzes in to meet her with a tray of food. Sometimes he isn't just visiting to feed her. Sometimes he comes to take her to the bathroom so that she may wash up in the sinks or use the facilities there. One of the stalls is stocked specifically for her with several boxes of various feminine items and a trash can for the depositing of anything old and used. This both surprises and worries her, to know he has foreseen her staying up to (or longer than) a month, and been reasonable (and realistic) enough to prepare for it. Sometimes he gives her a change of clothes, and whenever she's courageous enough to ask where he's gotten said articles of clothing, he either says he's killed a prostitute or robbed the salvation army, both of which, to Martha, are believable answers. Sometimes he comes in simply to retrieve an item or piece of paper from his desk. Sometimes he comes in looking like he wants to retrieve something, but in reality it's only that he's making sure she hasn't been disturbing the placement of anything. But mostly, he comes in to talk. And the main topic of conversation so far has been the technicalities of Gotham 1st National.

Martha lies on the bed, zoning out. She has been comatose, in a manner of speaking—a zombie—in this place where he's put her to rot. She yawns, eyes fluttering sleepily.

Up until now it's been a very business-like relationship. Come in, sit down, not too close, not too far, well mannered pleasantries, hello, how are you, ironic being that she is his hostage and he can only imagine how her "day's been going". Up until now it's been him poking and prodding her with the strangest questions.

"Put yourself in my place, Martha. If you wanted to rob Gotham 1st National, how might you go about it?"

Up until now it's been him asking her for information about things she had never really thought of before. When it came to working at, what was to her, simply _the bank_, she never really paid that much attention to the precise number of feet between the entrance doors into the building and the teller desks. And now she was being asked for those sort of minute details, and often times she would find herself struggling to give a helpful answer. But she has at least been cooperative. She's told him everything and anything she could, all while trying to ignore the fact that talking about the bank is making her miss her old life, is making her realize how much she took the normalcy of her old life for granted.

She recalls how big the windows were at Gotham 1st National. She feels like she's forgetting what natural sunlight was. She can't be sure how long it's been since she's felt the daylight on her face, but at any rate she's become accustomed to the dimness of the delicatessen, and her vision has gotten better in the dark.

He has her make lists when he is gone.

He gives her old dinning room place-mats and some crayons and asks her to "Please draw out a diagram, as best you can, of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd floors. Like a blueprint, Martha. Like a blueprint."

He does this for two reasons. One: for his own benefit, to be better organized and thus better prepared in the end. And two: to help Martha avoid worrying about her fate, that which he refuses to confirm. And up until now she's done her best to behave and obey—to cooperate.

Up until now the proposition of release, the small and almost irrational possibility of it has begun to sneak back into her mind. Faintly, she has begun to think that if she really, truly _has_ done a good enough job of cooperating, he might let her go soon. She has begun to think that, surely, it can't be long now.

Up until now, everything has been going steadily well. A routine, or something akin to one, had been formed between them.

Until today.

Today he knocks his knock and she lets him in and to her surprise, she finds he's carrying two bowls of oatmeal (breakfast, she guesses, as it's been for the last however many days) rather than one.

The two sit down on the couch together and he sets the tray up on a small coffee table facing the couch. He's got another clothing article under his arm and he sets it down in between them, grinning.

A brief silence.

"So," He begins, watching her cautiously take the oatmeal and sniff it. "How are you, Martha? Everything goin' well? Mind if I, uh, eat with you?"

She stares down at the oatmeal, brow furrowing. He's in a very friendly mood today, a little too friendly. She's thinking now that, maybe, just maybe, he's got all he wants from her.

Maybe, just maybe, he's put poison in her oatmeal.

"What's the matter, Martha?" He chirps happily, rocking back and forth like an eager child. "Not hungry today?"

She says nothing, sets the bowl down.

He licks his lips, shrugs.

"You know . . ." He muses, pointing to his face, "I still haven't told you how I got these scars."

"Aren't we going to talk about the bank today?" She asks him carefully.

"Mmmm, I think today—today we should do something different. Something _unplanned_. Wuddya think?"

She purses her lips.

"What's that?" She asks, eying the article of clothing.

He stands quickly, grabs the thing, shakes it out. She sees it's nothing more than a small velvet bag, out of which fall several make-up items. Lipstick, face-paint, eye shadow, baby wipes and a red hand-held mirror all land on the coffee table in front of her. She looks down at his make-up, puzzled.

"Let's play dress up!" He shouts. "Want to?"

She eyes him guardedly.

"No thank you." She tells him, feeling uneasy. "I would rather discuss Gotham 1st National."

"Aww! But that—" He grabs her, yanks her out of her seat, "—is no fun. Is it now, Martha?"

She watches as he pulls a long dagger out of the inside of his vest and angles the blade at her menacingly.

"Here, now. I'll tell you what. For every part of your face you cover, I'll wipe that part of mine clean. Sound good to you?"

"I don't understand." She says, trying to wriggle away from him. She hates being this close to him. "I-I'm confused. What has this got to do with Goth—"

"Absolutely nothing! I was feeling bored!" He screams, shoving her back onto the couch violently. "Weren't you?" He asks, voice suddenly calm and gentle.

She looks around, panicked now.

"Fine. Fine." She says hastily, and goes to take the lipstick.

"No." He snaps, and she quickly withdraws her hand from the coffee table. "No . . . The face-paint first, Martha. The face-paint first."

She takes the face-paint and he takes the mirror, holding it in front of her. She opens the container and dips her fingers into the cold, white paint. Slowly, she raises her fingers to her face, and while looking in the mirror, starts to coat her left cheek with it.

"That's it." He says coldly. "Have you ever wanted to be somebody else, Martha? Have you ever wished your face could . . . look different?"

She says nothing, continues to smear the paint over her cheek until she looks as pale as he does. His face seems cool and uncaring. He replaces the knife with one of the baby wipes and starts to wipe the makeup off of his own cheek.  
>Several minutes pass. Neither speaks.<p>

She keeps her eyes on the mirror, as best she can. He's stopped holding it strait, part of having to devote a minor portion of his attention to his own face which, as it stands, is almost completely devoid of makeup now. Several used baby wipes litter the floor around his feet in a crumpled pile.

He points down at the table with the mirror, gesturing toward the lipstick. She glances nervously at it, and back to him for approval. He nods once and she picks it up. Slowly, she starts to put the lipstick on, movements delicate and poised.

"No!" he hisses.

She jumps, fumbles, drops the lipstick.

"Pick it up!"

She hastily obeys.

He points the mirror at her and she wonders whether or not he's about to throw it.

"What do you think you're doing, Martha?" He asks her, voice irate. "Getting ready for your senior prom? This is not a beauty pageant!"

Trembling, she raises the lipstick to her face and starts again. This time she mimics his design, and spreads the lipstick over her lips, going past the corners of her mouth and coating her cheeks in thick globs that arc upward into a crooked smile.

He relaxes, and the flare of anger that had consumed his eyes recedes until his expression is once again that of dull contempt.

"Much better, Martha." He coos merrily.

The mirror is back in place now, more or less, and she can see her face.

She suppresses a gasp. She looks like him, but it's much worse. She looks like herself as well. She shudders and quickly looks away, feeling sick to her stomach and doing her best to focus on the material of the couch cushion beneath her. He seems to notice her discomfort and she hears the mirror hit the floor with a faint thud. Looking up she gets her first good look at him in the whole of their shared time together.

It is odd, seeing his naked face. She stares at his scars, studying them and noting how, while they still appear quite menacing, they now seem somewhat pitiful. She tries to imagine what it felt like for him and incidentally remembers her own scars. She clutches at her wrists as her breath catches in her throat. Her eyes scan the newly exposed flesh around the eyes – his are sunken in, wide and gassy within darkened bags. She can't help but feel a little sorry for him, but even then the feeling is fleeting as she focuses on his face as a whole. His expression is banal, average. There's something about the way he looks now that his war paint is gone. He isn't ugly, and he isn't attractive. She settles on categorizing his face as common-place, or at least it would be without the scars. With them he is a kind of perplexing grotesque – the sort of grotesque you respect. He reminds her of the gothic gargoyles that grace the outer ledges of the skyscrapers in and around the city; you can't help but look at them, despite their unsightly appearance. They're mesmerizingly repugnant.

"Well," He asks, brow twitching enticingly, "I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. Nolan."

She eyes him up and down and considers. With the absence of his mischievous mask, and maybe a slightly blander outfit, he could virtually pass for an ordinary person.

"It's funny. You look almost – "

She stops herself, suddenly aware of what she is about to say. He glares down at her suspiciously. Her mouth clamps tightly shut and the silence is deafening. After a moment he bares his teeth in a wicked grin.

"Normal?" He finishes for her, with just a hint of amusement. "Were you going to say _normal_, Martha?"

She quickly shakes her head, afraid. She's offended him. She's tried not to but it is too late, he has guessed her remark before she's made it. Preemptive strike.

"N-No, no, I only meant – I mean I didn't – I wasn't trying to –"

He raises his hand, cutting her off mid stammer.

"I don't care." He says bluntly and tosses the mirror at her. She flinches, catches it, and flings it aside as if she's just been handed a live rattlesnake.

"How cute." He taunts.

Before she can reply he jumps over the table and twirls about-face, letting himself land heavily beside her on the couch. She tries to scoot away, seeking shelter from his proximity by retreating to the far end of her side of the couch. But he catches her by the wrist and drags her to him. He puts an arm around her shoulder and keeps her there with a firm, tight grip. She doesn't look at him.

"You know," He begins, breath hot on her ear, "I used to be _normal_."

He emphasizes this last word with an obscene amount of sarcasm, and stares at her in an attempt to gauge her reactions. Martha refuses to make eye contact, so he shrugs and goes on.

"Had a job, had a mail box, a coat rack and a set of keys. Even had a wife." And with this her head jerks up, mouth slightly agape, eyes catching his at last and his grin widens at her shock. "What's that Martha? You don't think I'm _capable_? We both have the same organ pumping our blood. You should try not to be so judgmental."

She swings her gaze away and back down to the couch cushion, cheeks burning.

"Times were tight, though. She didn't come from a wealthy family, and me, well, I worked at a chemical plant downtown. One day she tells me she's pregnant, and it's right then and there that I realize we'll never be able to feed the kid with just my measly two-bit salary. Oh sure, I asked for extra hours, pulled the night shift on weekdays, was dead tired on weekends after the morning shift. But it wasn't enough, Martha. God help me, it just wasn't enough. I'm your classic example of a down-and-out lower-class slob who had no other options – I _had_ to resort to a life of crime."

She hears him speak, trying not to listen but failing. Classic villainous monologue? Deeply disquieting, heartfelt life-story? She has no idea, but she knows what it's building up to and she doesn't want to hear it. She clutches at her wrists and stares down at the threading of the cushion. Time stands still.

"Oh, it wasn't anything intense at first. No big jobs. I started small, and found I had a real knack for it. The wife never knew." He paused, shook his head sadly, and then went back to smilingly grimly. "After a while I began placing myself in mob affairs, and wouldn't you know it, they found me an interesting character. As a matter of fact, they found me so interesting that they felt it worth the trouble to try and eliminate me. Isn't that nice? Talk about being a celebrity." He declares arrogantly.

He withdraws the knife from his sleeve again and grabs her head, forcing her to look at it, to look at him.

"A couple of thugs showed up at the plant one night. I was working the night shift, the plant was dead, and they taught me their pleasant little lesson with crowbars in some shadowed corner of an unused office. The last of them gave me these." He points with a kind of sick pride at his scars. "Thought it was some funny joke. I can see why he did now, although, of course, at the time I couldn't."

She flinches at the image he has brought in to her mind. Pity mixed with horror and disgust blaze in the pit of her gut, and she is ashamed – ashamed to feel sorry for him, ashamed to be in this situation (although, really, what could she have done to prevent it).

"But that wasn't the worst of it, Martha." He finishes, voice a deep, hushed whisper. "I won't bore you with the details of what happened next. Needless to say they figured me for dead. So you know what they did, Martha? They took my wife out too. I got home in time to watch it happen. According to the papers the cause of the fire was electrical. Allegedly. But I know what _really_ happened. Men like that, they don't leave loose-ends, now do they . . . It was around about the time the rubble started to collapse that I finally saw the funny side. It takes a lot of effort to be so serious all the time. Life, all aspects of it, well now they just make me smile!"

His grin is obnoxiously wide.

"So now you know, Martha. Now you know why this little heist of mine is so very important to me. And I'm not the only one. Half of my men have their own score to settle with Gotham's organized crime leaders. Now you know why your cooperation, your _assistance_ with all of this means so much to me and the gang."

She squeezes her eyes shut, screaming in her head. _Go away now. Just go away. Go back to the meat locker the restaurant dinning room go to hell go somewhere anywhere the next customer can come to my till would you like to make a deposit or a withdrawal thank you have a good day only go away just go away go away GO AWAY!_

As if he were somehow able to hear her thoughts, he shrugs nonchalantly and stands. In an instant he's picked up everything from the tabletop, save for the baby-wipes, and has bundled it all back into the bag he brought.  
>He heads for the door. Martha says nothing.<p>

Without another word he leaves. Martha doesn't move.

He's left her the wipes to remove the makeup, but not the mirror. Silently, Martha puts her hands to her face and starts to cry again. The tears mix with the makeup and leave freshly cleaned skin in their descending wake. She sits alone in her cage and cries, but she can't quite be certain whether she's crying for herself, or for him.


	5. Dreams

CHAPTER 5: _DREAMS_

The Joker shuts the door and stands just outside it, waiting while holding his breath. Finally, he hears what he's been waiting for, the faint sobbing of Martha Aiken. He grins. Another fantastic performance. He suddenly feels entitled to an award of some kind, and dances happily up the stairwell and in to the corridor.

He had done it on a whim – brought the bag to Martha for the sheer thrill of it, and also, partially to see her reactions. She had kept most of them masterfully hidden, and he admits even now that he had not been entirely sure what she had been thinking for some of the charade. But either way, he had gotten the response he'd wanted, and recalling how she looked in his makeup he is happy.

He believes in keeping people like Martha Aiken on their toes and constantly wondering – always trying to figure out what about him is plausible and what is ploy. He has a million different stories to tell people like her, because, after all, if he is going to have a past he prefers it to be multiple choice.

He feels replenished from the deception.

He thinks on it for a moment and supposes she reacted as well as he would have expected your typical control freak to react to somebody like himself, coming in and throwing a wrench in between the pleasantly grinding gears of their tranquil little life. But it was becoming too much of a business relationship. The kidnapping, the captivity, the constant daily questioning. He had had the sneaking suspicion she would eventually get used to him, that that was what had happened, to a small degree. That a routine had begun to formulate. The thought of it depresses him. He hates it when people think they can predict him. He will need to keep upping the level with her, and considers that their relationship it is not unlike a chess game now. He realizes, with a surge of excitement, that he will need to keep making increasingly more outrageous moves just to keep her from correctly guessing the angle he is really playing. Who knew she would be such an exhilarating guest.

The makeup was the first attempt to beat her back down into submission, to prove she would never be able to fully anticipate him. Her captivity, his frenzied behavior. Somewhere in the back of his head he had felt it was really and truly necessary to give her a reason for all of it. He's sure part of it will put her mind at ease, the knowledge will make her feel as though she has regained a very small amount of control, that much he knows. But he's also sure that part of it will make him more of an enigma to her than ever, that even though she has a slight amount of control back he is still a thunderstorm without a forecast. And now the thing is done and his heart pumps quickly as he makes his way to his room. He is alive with new-found energy. He swims in the lies and they relax him, they give him strength in the same way a man swims the English channel and feels invigorated and invincible afterward. If nobody knows who and what he _really_ is, then he is a legend, and legends are revered.

He goes to open a door covered with graffiti and permanent marker, all of which state, in more ways than one, that this is _his_ room and thus should not be entered into without his expressed permission.

His room, once the office of the manager, is plain, barren, almost entirely devoid of furniture save for a single bureau, one lamp and a cot in the back corner. His men sleep more comfortably than he does, although it's a little known fact that The Joker never sleeps. His mind is constantly alert, ready, the way the gears of a clock continue to tick on faithfully hour after hour after hour. On occasion, however, he does rest. He seldom dreams good dreams, but he prefers the nightmares because they always give him such deliciously inventive ideas to experiment with in the waking world.

The walls of his room are stripped of wallpaper, and there are stains on the floor that outline the positions of the furniture that used to occupy it. Mold grows on the gray bricks. The room has the feeling of an abandoned doctor's office or crematorium, and he feels instantly at ease as he closes and locks the large, wooden door behind himself.

This room is the precise opposite of the one given to Martha Aiken, but both rooms represent separate halves of his personality. Martha sees the manic side, the part that organizes, that imagines and creates. Only he sees this room, his room, a representation of his true self. Empty, save for one or two necessary items, a portable radio included, and an odd mixture of filth and cold sterility.

He bounds across the room like a rabbit and crashes onto the cot, face upturned to the ceiling. A small arsenal of weapons are hidden under the sagging mattress, and a notebook and pen lay hidden under his pillow. He withdraws the pen and notebook and begins to write, scribbling chicken scratch for the rest of the night to the sound of heavy classical music. Notes mostly pertaining to his master plan, like he's keeping a diary of the entire experience for no reason other than to occupy himself in between the anarchy. He writes briefly about Martha, and how she proves that chaos is necessary. He has always believed that it is; in religion, in mathematics, in science, in politics, in crime, in brain waves and heart rhythms, even in the infinite blackness of starry space. He might argue that the Big Bang (if there had been such a delightfully imaginative thing) was a result of random chaos. He spends a time musing on how a growing body of research shows that too much order in intimate relationship systems is a bad thing. That rigid and predictable social interactions in families, for instance, leads to psychopathology over time.

He stops dead and starts to laugh madly.

The result of too much order in life is depression, anxiety, and conduct disorders.

Hilarious.

And what's better is that in a way, it makes sense. Too much order being traumatic. It reminds him of himself, of his own life and family.

After a while the bout of laughter dies away. The footsteps of passersby, his men wandering the halls respectively, echo through his door. He ignores them and returns to writing, bringing it back around to Martha Aiken and how people like her fail to recognize that this needed chaos is, in fact, _good_.

"It's good because it takes us away from a pattern – a pattern which would inevitably get boring." He muses aloud as he writes, putting on his best imitation of a lecturing professor while swinging his legs over the edge of his cot like a sulking teenager. "Chaos gives life flavor and unpredictability, and like I said before, it gives order a purpose. After all, _order_ can't exist without chaos. What would be the point?"

He sits up and places his back to the wall in an effort to reach a more comfortable writing position.

"While I'm sure there are those who would never believe me –" here he pauses and devotes an entire page of his notebook to a sketch of the Batman, "– it is my personal belief that Gotham could emerge to a more complex, _orderly_ state by moving through a period of chaos, like a nice refreshing dip in the chaotic pool. Chaos has the splendid ability to rejuvenate that kind of a system. Now, it's true that I could be lazy and let the mobsters serve as the element of chaos in Gotham. Lord knows they've been causing enough trouble as of late – but I'm not the kind of man to stand by and watch something executed poorly when I'll fully capable of pulling it all off it in a much more _organized_, artistic fashion."

He grimaces at the thought of his so-called competition. Too many criminals make it all about the money. He knows full well that the _superior_ criminal realizes that money burns. Doing something for the sake of accumulating wealth is a worthless waste of time. Money gained is money stolen or lost or spent on useless commodities. So much more destruction can be accomplished with the same amount of effort, and the effects actually last. For example, his tastes are simplistic and cheap, ranging from the delightful bang of gunpowder lit alight, to dynamite set in just the right area of an underground parking garage to topple the whole building. Wrecked rubble, red blood running.

His thoughts center on Martha's weak sobbing and the memory of her face covered in his makeup. He shivers involuntarily (how surprising) and quickly clears his head, taking a moment to center himself. He finishes writing, promising himself and his notebook that Gotham will not be the same once he's had his way with it.

_Wait 'til they get a load of me . . ._

A quick note on nightmares.

They have the nasty habit of appearing disguised at first as good dreams. And what's worse, the ones that start out this way – calm, pleasant, warm and enticing and providing the dreamer with such a strong feeling of _safety_ – they always seem so real.

Such is the case with Martha's nightmare. It is jumbled, an echo of reality that when remembered in the morning will seem dull and faded, but at the time it's being perceived is sharp and clear and lifelike. And safe. Safe until the walls of her home (how she's missed them, familiar and _safe_) begin to melt away to reveal the stained and tattered wallpaper of the delicatessen corridors. Safe until the television screen (Gotham nightly news, on at 8 o'clock eastern/central time) in her bedroom bursts abruptly into uncontrollable flames. Safe until her bed (soft, inviting, delightful) becomes jelly, and she starts to sink into it, screaming without a voice for somebody, anybody to come and save her. She tries to claw her way up and out of the pit, darkness envelops her, but there's just enough light for her to clearly make out the scars on her wrists. Only they're bleeding again. They're no longer scars, but wide open wounds gushing blood in thick dark waves, like her whole body is draining out in one long go.

She screams, long horrible howls up into the blackness.

She's starting to fall.

_Help me please god why does nobody hear me why does nobody HELP ME!_

And then . . . a hand. Stretched out, reaching, pulling her up out of the void. Pulling her into the safety of a tight embrace.

She clings to the blackened silhouette of her savior. She hugs and presses her face in to the fabric of his shirt, and smells that familiar scent of cologne mixed with some bazaar, rotting stench. Her relief lasts only seconds, because when she looks up she is horrified to see his ghostly grin and dead eyes staring back at her, hollow. He leans in, time seems to stop as his lips part while he descends on her. They lock faces, dimensions rip apart, and she is both elated and disgusted, both turned on and repulsed (by his taste as well as her own mixed reactions to it). She can feel his scars at the corners of her mouth, leaning in to her cheeks, and his tongue is in her mouth and exploring violently and it's lovely and it's appalling and all at once she's reeling. Something sharp at her back. Realization grips her all too soon as the knife slides easily in between her shoulder blades. The kiss of death. She shoves away violently, and watches as his face melts away like candle wax to reveal her own face, perfectly mimicked, covered in peeling makeup. She squeals, pig-like in her fear and pain, and proceeds to strike out at this hideous new doppelgänger. Her fists hit a glass mirror, sending shards flying, erasing her own reflection until it's particles in the air and disintegrating into dust.

All of a sudden she's back on Earth, clinging to the couch cushions like a deranged cat, sweat collecting on her skin in thick beads and panting like she's just run a marathon. She considers trying to pick apart the dream, analyze it with her tired, disgusted (disgusting?) mind, but eventually decides against it – decides she doesn't want to know. Decides to try and go back to sleep with the hope that more rest will cause her to forget her own brain's shocking betrayal.

But it is several hours before sleep finds her again.


	6. Sleep Deprivation

Chapter 6: _SLEEP DEPRIVATION_

After the makeup episode it takes some time for them to re-establish their routine, and even after doing so their relationship, or rather the stage it had reached prior to the episode, would not revert. True, it was still strained, but it was now strained in a different way, and Martha could not decide which was more disturbing; knowing less about The Joker, or more. Even trying to contemplate the logic he used in his decision making, trying to guess as to why he did certain things, what made his sick mind work the way it did seemed like a math equation far to complex for her to be able to solve. She doubted even a trained psychiatrist could make anything sensible out of his actions.

But at the very least, things went back to normal. As normal as they had been prior to the makeup, and the story about his scars.

While he comes to meet with her regularly, he never comes predictably. There is no set schedule and he arrives as randomly as a bolt of lightning strikes the earth. She's almost certain he's doing it on purpose. Another bit of psychological torture designed to keep her on edge and nervous.

Nevertheless, as a kind of established routine again emerges she becomes used to seeing him, and while the fear that he brings with him – the constant knowledge that he could fly off the handle at any point in time, and for no real reason – still cause her anxiety, she starts to want to interact with him. At first she can't understand why, but through careful consideration she rationalizes that it must be because he is, and has been, her only real social contact in what must be weeks now.

She starts to look forward to their meetings.

She imagines it must be the way an abused pet still wants to lick the hand of its owner, or the way a child becomes friends with its demented mother that keeps it locked in the basement all day. In this dark, damp place he's the only thing to look forward to. She is terrifically surprised, and a little bemused, when she finds the courage to ask for more place-mats to draw on and he complies (provided he show her every scrap of artwork she produces).

"I'll hang the best ones on the fridge." He tells her, laughing as he throws a dozen or so crayons at her and walks out the door.

In the days that follow the make-up episode Gotham 1st National is brought back up as the main topic, and her artwork also becomes part of their daily meetings. First the pleasantries, then the bank, and then the drawings. Nice, neat, simple. She is startled by the order of it all. He stares for several minutes at her pictures. She had never been an artistic person but now, with all other manner of escapism closed off to her, she figures, why the hell _not_ draw? Most of what she shows him are simple drawings. Depictions of items found around the wine cellar, a quick sketch of her left hand, an odd animal or two – usually a cat as she finds they're the easiest to draw, at least for her. At the end of each meeting he looks her drawings over for what seems like ages and in the end he gives one of two replies. An unimpressed shrug, or a wide, devious grin. There are no comments made regarding her artwork. No critique, no comparison to other artists, and she does not ask for any constructive criticism as she is sure he is unwilling to provide it. He is either pleased or he isn't.  
>Fair enough, she thinks, and it becomes just another part of their routine.<p>

Odder questions are asked during their meetings as well, with one question in particular striking Martha as unusually specific.

School buses.

He wants to know what time the school rush is. Not only that, but what time the school rush occurs in the case of the streets just outside the bank. While she gives as best an answer as she can, she can't help but ponder his seriousness in asking. He seems very determined to know the exact specifics, as if some crucial part of the heist somehow depended on the passing by of the large, yellow fleet.

She sits with him now at his side on the couch, discussing the buses. She's in the middle of a sentence when he quickly jumps up and claps his hands.

"Boring!" He declares, making her jump. "Pictures!" He yells loudly, clapping again like an enthusiastic child. "Show me your pictures, Martha."

She looks around the room, panicked. She hadn't drawn anything the night before or the morning after, and is at a loss. She looks at him, face denoting a mixture of apologetic dismay and terrified alarm.

"Oh." He says, slumping as his abrupt energy suddenly disappears. "Forget it."

To her astonishment, he seems genuinely disappointed.

She watches in silence as he tosses the room key at her and quickly leaves.

She sits alone in the quiet of her wine cellar cage and contemplates his swift exit, turning the room key over and over in her hands. After a moment she gets up, bends over and reaches under the couch, where her spare place-mats and crayons are concealed. Several seconds later she's sketching a crude version of his face on one of the place-mats. She doesn't know why she feels compelled to draw him. She just does. She thinks about showing it to him the next time he comes in. She thinks about how he might react. She thinks about whether or not he'll be impressed. Will he care? Should she care if he does? It gives her a familiar feeling. Almost like she used to feel the need to impress every teacher that ever gave her a failing grade, or befriend every neighborhood bully that teased her. She sits alone in the quiet of the wine cellar and draws for several hours after that, every picture depicting him in some way or another.

She hides the pictures under the couch and waits for him the next day, nerves a tense bundle. At last he comes, but at the end of their meeting he does not ask to see her artwork. She contemplates bringing it up herself as he heads wordlessly for the door, but decides against it in the end. Following this she immediately withdraws the pictures and tears them into tiny pieces until nothing comprehensible can be formed of the individual tattered images. She wishes she could light them on fire, and a strange mixture of frustration, dissatisfaction, and depression overwhelm her for the rest of the night.

Time passes, and Martha does not see how accustomed to her captivity she is becoming. Her need for control is slowly dissipating, but she does not realize it. She does not realize how much she has come to depend on him, to rely on what he does for her. The Joker is her source of food, her source of cleanliness, and in some cases, her source of entertainment. Although she refuses to admit it, some of his antics begin to grow on her. While she still finds him terrifying in almost every other gesture and joke, sometimes she manages to spot the tiny glimpse of surreal, insane irony he hints at with his sense of humor. Sometimes, rarely, she finds herself trying to suppress a giggle and almost always afterward she is mortified and guilt ridden by the comprehension that, yes, she is changing and yes, she is learning to understand a mad man and yes, she is loosing her old self more and more with each passing day.

Normalcy is lost on her as she begins to forget the commonplace and conventional. She remembers, vaguely, the details of her old daily routine. Her original life. Get up at the obnoxious request of the alarm clock, shower, dress, eat, sit in traffic (the radio's a trustworthy companion), arrive at the bank, do several tedious hours worth of mind numbing work, sit in traffic again, return home, eat (cheap microwaveable meals fill her freezer), fall asleep watching the news, get up at the obnoxious request of the alarm clock and do it all over again. She remembers taking great care to plan her daily activities out in advance, the way she would plan most aspects of her life up until now. Picking out her outfits for the work-week every Sunday, scheduling what she would eat for lunch on odd and even days. She absentmindedly recalls her hobbies; how she would sometimes jog, _sometimes_ being the key word. She would shop on occasion as well, make a habit of looking at lovely dresses through the shops of windows and convincing herself they were not her style or far too expensive for her menial salary. Now all she wears are ghetto rags procured by her captor using unthinkable methods.

Soon her past seems to drift away until it seems like a dream, like her life before this was just some elaborate fantasy and that this current life has been and always will be the correct one. All she knows now is the wine cellar and while her captivity slowly crushes her spirit, in a strange way it also frees it because she knows she doesn't have to think for herself anymore. She doesn't have to guess or worry about the future. It's a great relief because she knows she'll be taken care of just so long as he keeps asking about the bank, and just so long as she can cooperate and provide the information he requests.

She starts to dream about him.

Mind, recently she has dreamed about him every time she's gone to sleep, but this is the first dream that hasn't been absolutely horrifying. The first dream that has not sent her starting awake and shrieking at the top of her lungs in the blackness of the wine-cellar. The first dream that has not seen her checking her chest and torso for bullet holes or stab wounds. Or cursing her demented, regrettably twisted libido.

The first true dream that is not a nightmare is a simple one. She is at Gotham 1st National, serving a long line of customers. She has her eyes on deposit slips and when she looks up he's on the other side of the counter, without his makeup, dressed in a plain black suit and tie. He looks like another banker. Nothing is said between them. He simply hands her a large bag marked with a dollar sign like something out of a cartoon show. She nods, takes the bag, and opens it to see hand-drawn money colored with crayons. The scenario abruptly ends as she rouses.

She has her first opportunity to calculate the time after he takes her to the bathroom one morning and she see's that she's bleeding. Her first menstruation while in captivity. Judging by that, it's been slightly more than a month since her initial occupation of the wine-cellar. She accepts this fact with bland recognition because she knows that if she starts counting, that if she addresses the length of her captivity full-on, the depression will devour her. So she makes a point to purposefully ignore it. Not uncaring, just careful not to bruise her already-fragile psyche.

She doesn't tell him. He doesn't ask. But when he returns her to the cellar she finds a trio of painkillers left on the coffee table for her. While they are recognizable as a trusted brand, her paranoia advises her not to take them. Even still, she remains both quizzical and slightly touched at the gesture.

The dream is reoccurring, although each time a little bit more is revealed. After being handed the money he holds up a cardboard sign with a large question mark painted across it's front. Another cartoon character antic. She simply points across the bank to the vault.

She does not tell him about these dreams, and she has not drawn in days now. Not since her attempts to draw him. She can somehow sense that the two are connected. It made some sense that she should dream about him, just as it made sense that she should dream about the bank. After all, their meetings were the only constant in her life at the moment. And what did the meetings consist of? Him, and discussing the details of Gotham 1st National. Case in point, to dream of him and the bank were not necessarily bazaar.

She begins to grow concerned. It was understandable to dream about him in a threatening way, to see him in her dreams as he was in real life – dangerous, erratic, sinister. But to dream about him acting so ordinary, it disturbed her. Whereas she had initially tried to avoid analyzing that first nightmare (she refused to wander down that trail of thought), she spent long portions of her days trying to figure out the meaning of the reoccurring dreams – just why he was in them and acting so placid. Perhaps it was her subconscious mind trying to protect her from him by placing him in a more wonted light. Perhaps it was her mind's attempt to ease her worries by putting him in a situation that was her's to control. In every dream it was the same. He was always the customer, she was always the employee, and she was always the one he was asking for assistance and advice. Please take my money? Please show me where the vault is?

She is thankful for the total lack of disturbing elements, and took special note of the fact that in these continuous fantasy exchanges there was no violence, torment, or kissing. But the mystery continues to plague her.

She starts to go without sleep.

He notices.

One day he arrives to greet her with her tray of food, and as he sits down next to her on the couch he remarks, quite candidly, on the state of her appearance.

"I don't think –" She begins.

"Than you shouldn't _speak_." The Joker hisses, and she quickly shuts her mouth. "What do you think this is, Martha? A game? Is this a move against me, huh? Just what is it that you're trying to accomplish, exactly?"

He takes the tray of food from her lap and sends it flying across the room. She is too tired to flinch, so she simply sits there, staring numbly at the mess on the floor with tired eyes. The smell will bring flies before some one is sent in to clean it up. He takes her by the base of the neck and leans her backward, hovering over her like an angry parent.

"I got news for you, girly girl," He seethes wickedly through smiling teeth, "If this is your attempt at revolt, it's not a very impressive one. What do you think you're doing? You want to starve yourself of sleep, you do that on your own time, not mine. I need you awake, Martha. Awake and alert. You're no good to me like this. Pay _attention_."

He says this last word with such ferocity that she quickly snaps out of her stupor and glares at him. _It's your fault, you freak. You're the one invading MY dreams. I'd be sleeping fine if it weren't for YOUR ugly FACE._

She tries to fidget free and his grip tightens. Feeling the pain he's inflicting, she hastily relaxes, showing her submission.

"Adda girl," He coos happily. "I've gotta say, though, Martha, your little act of rebellion would've gotten a tad bit more attention if you'd used a knife."

He glances to his collection on the far end of the room and she looks up, eying the blades wearily. Her hands immediately clamp around her wrists to hide her scars.

"Oooor," He continues, "Maybe you weren't that keen on trying to stab at me? Makes sense. If you did I'd have probably survived, and if I didn't add an extra mouth to your face one of my men would have. They're surprisingly loyal."

He pauses a moment for dramatic effect and then, in a low, deep whisper he says "Maybe this is a cry for help. In that case, I'd have still used the knife. Or were you going for something new this time?"

Without another word he grabs at her wrists until he's wrenched one of her hands free. She squeezes her eyes shut, too exhausted to struggle. She lets him look over her self inflicted blemishes until he eventually releases her. She does not scoot away. She sits there, dazed and fatigued.

He slides his fingers smoothly up the scars in a vertical line until she hits the base of her palm. She doesn't react strait away when he asks her "What kind of knife did you use?"

After a moment she eyes him with a strange, ponderous glare. Outraged scrutiny mingled with dreamy exhaustion.

"Don't look at me like that." He replies, hands still on her wrists and tightening. "It wasn't the obvious question, now was it."

She has to admit, it wasn't the question she'd been expecting.

"I'll bet . . ." He continues, glancing down at the scars he's been investigating, "I'll bet it was short. A peach peeler maybe, or a pocket knife? Some little Swiss army antique your grand pappy gave you in his senility."

He is halfway there, and she is beginning to come to her senses. She contemplates trying to move away. It's a grand decision to ponder in her current, sleep-deprived state. So many variables to take in to account, she almost misses what he says next.

"I'll bet it slid in nice and smooth. Did you sharpen it beforehand? Careful thing like you, nice, organized little planner like you – of course you sharpened it." He purrs sadistically.

She makes an attempt – one quick, jerky movement backward. She manages to catch him off guard and slip his grip, but before she can move far enough away he's back on her, hands right where they were seconds ago. Drat. Attempt: failed.

He laughs at her, a low, taunting chuckle.

"I'm only joking." He says cruelly. "I wouldn't care, either way. Just so long as I have the information I need. But we're halfway done with that as it is so . . . You want to kill yourself? Deprive yourself of sleep, cut yourself, _piss me off?_ Go right ahead. I could even give you some ideas, if you prefer. In fact, I offer my assistance, if it's at all wanted. Only stop wasting my time and _get on with it_."

He's deadly serious on this last sentence.

A beat. And then the laughter resumes. He seems genuinely jovial.

"It isn't the prospect of having to clean you out of this little room here that irritates me, Martha. It's knowing that you won't just go ahead with it. You chicken out at the last second, don't you, and then you waste _my_ time when it comes down to it. How selfish of you."

And with this latest comment something in her snaps, and her eyes glaze over and then everything is calm and bliss and she has done it. She has stopped caring. For how long she can not be sure, she doesn't want to second guess a glorious thing. It occurs to her that she quite literally has nothing left to loose, and thinking she does is an even bigger mistake than taking a crack at suicide was. She takes a moment to study this new-found calm in her and figures it must be how the morphine addicts feel just after an injection. A fleeting rainbow during the hail storm.

She turns to him, smiles pleasantly (how can I help you today, sir? deposit or withdrawal?) and says "It was an apple peeler, actually. Graduation gift from my mother."

This stifles his laughter in a way she didn't think was possible, and when all of his attention is on her, she begins to tell him why she cut herself.

It does not take long to explain it.

To explain all about her attempted suicide

_(attempt: failed)_

and the reasons behind it.


	7. Stories and Sensations

Many apologies about how long this has taken to get up – but I have been going through writing waves, and each wave seems to have me produce not one, but multiple chapters, with me going back to previous ones to be sure of continuity as well as make occasional touch-ups and revisions. It's a strange process.

But yes, I hope you all enjoy.

. . .

CHAPTER 7: _STORIES AND SENSATIONS_

In the beginning, there is no Batman.

She remembers this. She can see it clearly, like a waking dream.

She recalls how, even as an innocent adolescent she could still see it in the headlines of the papers and on the Gotham City news every night at six.

Fourth victim found this month, police dragged the river for the missing man, woman found raped and stabbed in alleyway, student sent to Arkham after several pistols were found in locker, Thomas and Martha Wayne murdered in front of son's eyes. The statistics of it were even more frightening; sixty precent of Gotham youths addicted to some form of narcotic, forty precent of Gotham police force corrupt, crime in Gotham up eighty precent in last decade.

In the beginning, there was no Batman, and Martha knew well enough not to play outside at night, or outside at all for that matter. She knew not to talk to strangers, not to get in cars with strangers, and she knew what areas of the city to avoid when she went exploring with her friends from school. She knew how to stay safe. Her parents reminded her consistently, and maybe that was because they cared about her. Or, maybe it was because, by then, the city has already gotten to her older brother, Matthew. Maybe it was because, by then, he had already been claimed by the corruption that seemed to touch every house on every road, despite the wealth of the collective community, or location of the neighborhood.

Sitting here now, in the dilapidated delicatessen, reliving her painful history with a madman, Martha remembers how it began simply enough.

She tells The Joker about how Matthew was sixteen by the time she was twelve, and how her parents had already started getting calls from the principal regarding Matthew's repeated absences from class. It takes Martha some time before she can finally blurt out that her brother's playing hookie was the least of it.

He had been a good kid up until then. She does her best to stick up for him. Even now, as an adult, she stills paints the prettiest, most forgiving picture she can. He was smart, kind, as polite as any young boy could allow himself to be without meriting the torment of his peers. He had been a good kid up until he'd changed, a transformation so abrupt and so extreme in it's lack of logic that nobody could wager a sane guess as to what exactly had happened. This lack of explanation had made it all the more painful to accept.

Whereas, in the beginning Matthew had been energetic and extroverted, after the change he became withdrawn, quiet, easily agitated.

Slowly, Martha tells the Joker about how she lost her brother.

Things around the house started to go missing. Little things at first, things nobody would easily notice like the bigger bills out of various wallets, or the blender that nobody ever used. Then the more noticeable kitchen appliances, like that toaster and waffle-maker. And at last, the big electronics, like dad's VCR and surround-sound speakers, and mom's hairdryer and portable walkman. Finally, Martha's toy oven that would occasionally provide her with a distraction from boredom followed by a miniature cupcake or brownie.

Matthew was not brought to specialists, that option was unaffordable. He was given speech after speech, warning after warning, chance after chance. No ultimatum or offering would suffice. Instead, things came to a head when he managed to get arrested after trying, and failing, to extract a stereo system from a locked car approximately two blocks down from the local pharmacy where their father worked.

This first incident was heart breaking, and nearly tore the family apart. But the ones that followed weren't any less unsettling.

Juvenile hall became Matthew's home away from home for the next few years. His life followed a routine that exceeded predictability. Matthew would be released to a wary father and forgiving mother, and not less than a week or two later he would break their hearts and fragile hopes with yet another failed attempt at second-rate theft, which would always result in another round at juvi. The cycle was stuck on repeat. Nevertheless, Martha took to writing her brother religiously during his bouts of imprisonment. She never received a response.

At the age of eighteen Matthew ran away.

Martha caught him that night on his way out, and was bright enough to see the packed duffle bag slung mysteriously over his shoulder and suspect that something was not right. But no reply was given to her pained inquiry. She did not try to stop him, and when she woke the next morning to the hysterics of her mother and fury of her father, she feigned curiosity and kept her mouth more or less shut. She was fourteen when he left.

Six years later saw her as an early graduate, youngest in her class at Gotham Community College, a small, underfunded university on the edge of the narrows. Scholarships had seen her through to receiving a diploma in maths and business, and it took her less than a year following her graduation to secure a part-time position as a bank teller at Gotham 1st National.

In her life, all the things Martha had ever strived for were redundantly bland. But there was a purpose to this. She can not begin to explain it to The Joker because, even now, she has great difficulty in analyzing a quarter of a lifetime of personal decisions. All she can say is that she wanted predictability, and stability. She omits the part about wanting control. The Joker already knows this. She knows he already knows this, and by now it's irrelevant.

But what she does say in the end is that she only ever wanted to avoid ending up like Matthew.

At first she ignored the whispers. Other employees liked to talk. Some of them had actual information to back up their stories. Gotham 1st National was a haven for criminals. She wasn't blind to the fact, but at first she chose to ignore it. Until her third year promotion, when they put her in charge of the Falconi account. She was reluctant, at first, but succeeding a short meeting with Mr. Dominick (who calmly told her to act like a professional), she decided to take the promotion and do her best, despite her nagging conscience. After a while, she got used to it.

She sits back a moment and wonders.

If something bad happens to a person, and if that badness _lasts_, like cancer or addiction, does that person learn to live with it? Does that person _adapt_? She thinks about the dreams she's been having, the dreams that have been keeping her wide awake at night, and compares them to that first promotion. How similar. She shivers and tells The Joker about how the telephone call came on a Tuesday night. She has no explanation as to why or how she can remember the day. It isn't significant and she supposes she only really remembers the minute detail of the day because of the importance of the call that occurred on it.

Matthew had spoken in hasty, shaky breaths, puffing out words that Martha could not comprehend.

She sums it up bluntly.

He had gotten in with the Falconi family. Somehow. And something had gone wrong. Somehow.

He had needed a place to sleep. A place to hide. She hadn't had a choice. When he came to her she had asked not a single question – she didn't want to know, and he had no words for her. Too much of a gap in both age and time had left them both hesitant to talk. She thinks back on it. Even if she had proposed a dialogue, there would never have been enough time to complete it to a satisfying degree.

It had happened a matter of days following his initial arrival. A pair of men in well tailored suits had come to her house at two in the morning (the day escapes her) and politely asked to see Matthew. She had known right away who they were, and could sense instantly that they would not believe any lie she could try to tell about the supposed whereabouts of her brother. So she had let them come in, and she had let them have Matthew. The ruckus had been almost cartoonish in it's volume and physicality. Dishes and pans had been throne, the table had been knocked over, a window had been broken. She wonders even now why her neighbors had never bothered to call the police about the disturbance.

She tells The Joker about how she had watched the men drag her brother out of her home, kicking and screaming and hoarsely cursing her name with each violent yank. She considers it her one other whiteness of death, besides the quick ends seen by The Joker's men. And far more disturbing as well.

"I'll try harder." says The Joker.

At any rate, she never saw her brother again.

Three days later she had come into work to see a vase of long, red roses sitting on her desk. There had been no card. She had known right away what message the sympathy flowers represented, and left work soon after, complaining of stomach pains. She had taken the flowers with her to be safe. She did not take the bus home but she walked in a haze of numbness, not unlike what has overcome her now. It is partially comforting, as it had been then. She could recall how all other noises, the commotion of cars and passersby alike, had been drowned out by the thoughts in her head, and how her guilt had been so overwhelming that, eventually, her mind had just shut down. Some sort of self defense mechanism, pathetic in it's simplicity. But the main thoughts, the truly important ones, still remained, haunting her with each heavy footstep back to her home.

She could have – _should_ have done more for her brother. She should have lied, tried to lie, to Falconi's men when they were at her door. She should have never accepted that promotion at the bank (that was likely how they found her, how they drew the conclusion that she was hiding him). She should have called out for her father when she saw her brother trying to leave all those years ago. She should have called for her neighbors when they started to drag him away.

That night she had unplugged the phone and drawn the curtains, but neglected to lock her doors. An hour later found her in the bathroom, crumpled on the tile floor with her wrists cut, the apple peeler lying a few feet away from her as the blood began to pool.

She does not go in to detail. It is painful enough to recite in the briefest of summaries. The things she saw as the life drained slowly out of her were so intense they defied description. Like some deranged drug trip, she was whiteness to all manner of fault in the universe, and the peak of corruption and violence were represented by a shower of deep red rose petals, a magnificent hallucination which gave her no want to continue living. Needless to say, she tells him about how her neighbor, Andrew, wanting to barrow some god forsaken item (a pot or pan or probably sugar, she couldn't be sure) had wandered in and eventually found her there, at her worst and almost dead.

"He was lovely." She explains, words sounding empty. "He stayed remarkably calm. I could never have been so calm like that."

She takes a moment to reflect on it, and then continues.

The time spent at the hospital psychiatric ward had been embarrassing. They had set a nurse to watch her like a hawk, scanning for repeated attempts. She had found it ludicrous at the time, but she had been thankful for two things. Firstly, they did not call her mother (her father was dead by this point, heart attack in his sleep), and Andrew was not one for gossip, especially concerning such personal matters. And second, they did not send her to Arkham for evaluation. The horror stories she had heard about Arkham were far more frightening than anything she could fathom.

"You've got no idea, kid-o." The Joker pipes in, scowling.

After about a month under surveillance she was released. Mr. Dominick was very understanding, although, as far as he knew she had been stricken with a severe case of bronchitis which had called for her to be hospitalized. Nobody asked her about her sudden change of outfits, though. Long sleeves that reached down to the knuckles, even in summer.

She stops again, realizing that, all things considered, The Joker has been the first one to hear the whole story apart from Andrew, who was more of a whiteness than an audience. She thinks about what this means, how it alters their relationship. They're finally on level playing ground. As level as it can get, in this sort of situation.

After the episode she had thrown herself into her job, and understandably so. She had focused on the routine, on the continuity, the monotony of her every day life until a year and a half had passed and she had pleasantly covered up her little indiscretion in her head. It never bothered her after that, tending to the accounts of crooks and thieves, of the men who took her brother early in life, and the ones who were most likely responsible for his childhood corruption. And she had found it all delightfully fitting that, a year from her supposed self recovery, such a guilty soul as herself should wind up the captive of a truly sadistic individual like The Joker.

"And that's all." She finishes coldly, wrapping her sleeves down around her wrists as best she can.

"And that's all." He repeats, a hint of mimic in his otherwise deep tone of voice.

She eyes him for a time, studying him. She is so _tired_. Finally, she says "Go away now. I want to sleep."

His expression is one of total indignation mingled with shocked delight. He quickly stands, bows, and leaves the room. She does not stop to evaluate his reaction to her command – was it a command, or a request? She doesn't stop to review this either. She simply lays down, finding the couch an incomparable comfort, and passes out.

The lack of dreams is both relieving as well as unexpected. If Martha had allowed time to become relevant again she would be able to take comfort in the fact that she's slept for a day and a half. Miraculously, The Joker does not disturb her. Not that it would have registered, but still, he decides, for once, to be kind.

When she wakes she feels refreshed, both mentally and physically. She pulls the blankets slowly off and stands, observing her surroundings clearly for the first time in what feels like centuries. It's as though a weight has been lifted. She walks around, feeling the dirty floor under her feet, sniffing at the dusty air, grimacing at the stench of something rotten and decaying, most likely a rat caracas nailed to the wall (or the food The Joker had previously sent sailing across the room). She does a few paces around the cellar, stretches, coughs to clear her throat. She feels strangely empowered, like she could run a marathon or punch a champion boxer and escape the ring unscathed.

She drops to her haunches and surveys the room from a new angle, eventually peeking under the couch until her eyes fall on the old place-mats and crayons. She crawls over and withdraws them, staring blankly from one item to the next until, suddenly, something clicks. Eureka. It's a phenomenal sensation, the epiphany that spontaneously lights up her brain like a Christmas tree, pure beauty and inspiring. She can see it now, more clearly than in the beginning, when it was fear and lack of control that occupied her nervous mind. She can see it like a puzzle, but as if from the prospective of one of the many, many pieces. She can see how it all fits together, how she fits within the picture.

She goes swiftly to the door and starts to bang with her firsts until, at last, somebody comes. When she hears the footsteps she slides her key under and listens for the unlocking noises. The door swings open to reveal a goon, common place with a sloping brown and a scab over his left cheek. He hands her back the key, looking impatient.

"I want to see him." She demands.

The goon scoffs, says nothing, goes to close the door. She's at the edge and pushing to keep it open. She makes the demand again, this time loudly, and for a moment the goon simply looks at her. Eventually, he nods, once, and she backs away. With that the goon is gone and the door is shut again.

She waits. Pacing back and forth in the office, she waits for what feels like hours. After some time she hears more footsteps. She is astonished to realize that she is able to recognize them as his. How much time must she have spent with this man to know him by the sound of heel and toe alone?

In an instant none of that matters, and he's in the room with her, arms crossed tightly over his chest and a stern, angry-teacher look on his freshly painted face. Moments pass as he eyes her up, with her simply standing there, suddenly aware of the imposition she must have caused him. She wonders if he was sleeping, if the goon woke him. She wonders what he will do to her now that sense has returned to her.

"Well . . . " He begins crisply, "We're _waiting_."

She takes a cautious step forward and a deep breath in. She exhales, pale faced and straightaway on her guard.

"Colmany on the corner of 22nd Street and Persian." She says frankly. He simply stares. "You'll need men on the roof, won't you? It would take too long to have them come in from the ground floor and try to climb up. You'll want them there right away to cut the main power to the vault and alarms. You'll want them on the roof to begin with. That way your ground team can manage things on the office floor without difficulty. Colmany is the closest building there, and you're lucky because it's full of apartments. There's got to be an empty one."

His head dips slightly, and she can tell he's mulling it over.

"So what, then? Are my men supposed to fly from one rooftop to another? Leap out of some apartment window and swoosh over like the Batman?" He asks her, tone dripping with derision.

"I don't know. I don't know." She admits, faltering. "Ropes, maybe. Like a swing cable. I don't know, maybe that's how the Batman does it." She shakes her head, frowning.

He grins, eyes narrowing, and approaches her. He puts his hand on her shoulder and she bristles when he leans in close, preparing to whisper something in to her ear.

"What could you possibly know about the Batman?" He sneers giddily.

She shakes her head again, saying nothing. He leans back and looks at her, searching.

"Say, I got a question for you, girly-girl. What about _me_? How do you know _I'm_ not the Batman?"

She blinks at him, and his grin widens.

"You can't be." She says plainly. "You're on the opposite end of the spectrum."

It is a bold thing to say, and he takes it well.

"Oh?"

"You're a different planet in the same solar system." She explains, and he chuckles, impressed.

"And what does that make you, Martha? Some poor astronaut who got sucked into the black hole?"

She doesn't answer.

He slaps her, hard. She falls away from him, face stinging, but he lurches out and grabs her like a kind of praying mantis, violently dragging her back to him.

"I love it, Martha! Your little plan! I just L-O-V-E love it with a million tiny throbbing hearts! But don't you _dare_ – Don't you _DARE_ try and presume to tell me that I haven't already thought of that. Don't you dare, Martha." He warns, deadly and vicious.

"But you hadn't!" She argues shakily, beyond the point of caring. He's just a man with scars, and she's already shown him hers. "You hadn't thought of it, had you! I know you hadn't because I read it in your face!"

"Oh? Did you really? You read me like a good old text book, did you? Yeah, I'll bet you did. Well, that's a shame, Martha. That means I'm becoming predictable. I'll just have to change that, now won't I."

She doesn't see him remove the knife from his trouser pocket.

"You can let me go now." She reasons, "What I said about Colmany – that solves you're problem. That and the god damned school buses. You can rob the bank and get away with it. How can I predict you if I'm not around? You can just let me go!"

He brings the knife up quickly, like a snake bite. She screeches as it nicks her cheek, but he doesn't let her back away.

"You won't tell a soul? You won't go back to the bank? You'll leave town, Martha? Will you leave town?" He asks her, screaming hysterically in to her ear. Before she can answer he slams his face against her cheek and suddenly she can feel his tongue darting out, hot and slick against her skin, lapping away the small trickle of blood the cut has provided.

She jerks away, eyes wide, face burning. She sees the blood on the tip of his tongue as it recedes back in to his mouth, and she is more angry than afraid now. She is angry and, what is that? Aroused? Did she feel – _no_, it couldn't be. She shakes her head, focusing on the anger. How dare he damage her face, how dare he humiliate her this way. She's seconds away from disregarding the knife entirely, and kicking at his shins as hard as she can but then she's on the floor, he's pushed her away and she's stumbled back and tripped over herself. She looks up at him, one last hateful glance, as he backs away toward the door. She gawks. Impossible. Is he shaking? Is that disgust on his face? It can't be. It must be the adrenaline. It has to be.

He points the knife at himself and then down at her.

"To be continued, faithful viewers. Next episode, next episode." Is all he says before leaving.

She screams, guttural, raging, and draws her sleeve over her cheek repeatedly, wiping away his saliva until her face is as dry as a bone. She flips the coffee table over, rips the place-mats, breaks the crayons. She throws old glasses of water he's left in her dungeon for her hydration, hurling them with all her strength at the door. They burst apart in fireworks of glass and liquid, one after the other until there's a small wet puddle of broken shards at the base of the door. When her anger finally subsides she finds herself spent, and feebly returns to her bed. She does not receive food until the next day, and it is not brought to her by The Joker. In fact, The Joker does not return to her room for more than a week. New clothes, like the food, are delivered by different men at different times, and she is positive that these strange new rags have been procured in the same way but not by the same man.

Time passes.

One day she receives a book. An old, torn and tattered copy of Jack London's "Call of the Wild" concealed within a bundle of dirty sweaters. The book is hardly a fitting addition to her already cluttered surroundings, but when she opens it up to the first page she finds in bold red marker the word SORRY, scribbled in perhaps the most child-like handwriting imaginable over the title.

She places the book aside for a long while, contemplating the meaning behind The Joker's hidden note. Could he have been serious? Could he have meant it? Sorry for what? The argument regarding the Colmany building? Inflicting the wound to her cheek, or licking it clean? Or could it be that he was sorry for the whole rancid affair, the entire kidnapping escapade. Was The Joker even capable of feeling remorse? It was a better bet to assume it was all just one big joke to him, her suffering and disgrace at his hands.

Finally, she decides none of it is worth the effort anymore, and proceeds to read "Call of the Wild" from back to front over the course of several days. Just as she finishes with it, a new book is brought to her, a copy of Jane Austin's "Pride and Prejudice". No note this time, but the cover has been half burnt off leaving Jane without her dashing, yet agitating mate, Mr. Darcy. Martha does not see the meaning in this, and goes on to complete it in less than a day. The third book to arrive is "A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgres. This one does contain a note – not as short as the first, but still too short to derive a plausible hidden meaning.

THIS ONE'S MY FAVORITE.

She reads it and can instantly tell why.

Time continues to pass, and she is given more books to read. She starts to keep count of the days, judging as best she can by the repeating rotation of the men who bring her food. She gathers they're set to a well organized roster, and is thankful for that fact, as the small semblance of time that she has finally allowed to return to her also brings that feel of control back with it. She keeps track by jotting small lines down at the interior back cover of "A Clockwork Orange", hiding the book under the couch cushions whenever the men are about to enter.

She begins to feel less on edge, and more secure. Not entirely _safe_, but secure. Old urges begin to return – her sex drive reappears, to her astonishment. She discovers herself thinking about old coworkers she thought were handsome, past men in her life. A small fire has caught in her mind and each time she notices this reality she quickly attempts to douse the flame by reminding herself of her situation.

She starts to dream again. Not about The Joker, not at first. The dreams are fairly sexual in nature, and initially this reality greatly disturbs her. She is becoming far too comfortable again, and she knows it. But what can be done to rectify the problem? While the books provide some distraction, ultimately she gives in to her more primitive urges, not wishing to deprive herself of sleep a second time. She allows the dreams to happen and she allows herself to take pleasure in them, to an extent. The men in the dreams are faceless, and the acts they preform on her tend to take place outside the delicatessen. Sometimes at Gotham 1st National, other times at her house, in her own bed. They never mean much, the acts, but there's always something at the edge of each dream, a familiarity to each man that she glimpses here and there but can never quite make out. A hint of pale skin, a dash of red on the lips. Small things enough to take the erotic and twist it into the troubling.

On one or two occasions she wakes in the middle of the night to find her hand inching down her belly to preform certain wanton acts. Sometimes she stops herself, sometimes she keeps going (but only on the occasions when she is at best half awake). She has yet to allow herself the gratification of the entire act, however. She is too afraid, too disgusted with herself. To permit her body to behave in that way, to come to that inevitable conclusion here, in the decrepit wine cellar of the delicatessen is a thought she refuses to entertain.

Nevertheless, after a time she finds herself falling back to that frenzied exchange with her bleeding cheek, and her thoughts often turn to him and his tongue licking away the last remnants of her blood. She doesn't know why it's suddenly peaked her interest, and she can't for the life of her explain why the memory has started to arouse her. But she's learned from that first instance of sleep deprivation, she does nothing to block the unwanted thoughts. She wishes to remain clear-minded for the most part, even though he hasn't been to her in ages for information on the bank. It's more for herself than for anything or anyone else.

Martha also finds her mind dwindling on those first dreams featuring him. As though if on cue this seems to invite them back into her head, and once again she is plagued by that same vivid reoccurring dream of them together at the bank. Only now it is complete, and for the first time in who knows how many nights she experiences the entire dream, eye-opening in it's totality.

She is at Gotham 1st National again, serving the same long line of customers. He's back where he once was, on the other side of the counter, without his makeup, dressed in the same plain black suit and tie, looking so drab and ordinary it's almost funny.

He hands her the large bag marked with the dollar sign and she nods, takes the bag, and opens it to see the hand-drawn money colored with crayons. Same as always. After being handed the money he holds up the cardboard sign, the one with a large question mark painted on to it. She points across the bank to the vault, unable to determine just how many times she's pointed in the past. It all feels so nostalgic.

He starts to walk over, stops and shakes his head.

"No." He says, clear as crystal. "Show me."

She does not hesitate. She hastily rounds the counter and takes him by the hand, leading him along like a lost child through a crowd. They arrive at the vault and he reaches out. She watches as the door slowly opens, as if it had been waiting for his silent command. It swings ajar and she sees the interior of the vault, observes it's contents and starts to laugh wildly. There is no money, no gold and silver, no treasure to claim. There is no vault interior, only a vast and empty field below a cloudy gray sky. She goes to step out into the open, wanting so badly to walk on the grass. She can only imagine how cool and gentle and perfect it will feel against the skin of her bare feet. She kicks off her work shoes, preparing for the bliss of freedom, but something is holding her back. He is, and she crumples under the added pressure of his forcefully tight grip. He rolls her in to him like she's his dance partner, and clings tightly to her with a constricting embrace.

"No." He says again.

She feels small and childlike as he holds her.

"I like you too much." She hears him say.

She is starting to come out of it.

"I like you too much." He repeats, and the world around them begins to melt away into oblivion.

Martha Aiken is rousing again. She does not want to this time.

"Don't you get it?" Her mind's worth of an imitation asks her in a weak tone of voice. "You're my pet. None of the rest of it matters. The others, they're not companions. They're slaves. But you - you're my pet. And I'm your owner."

Just before she can wake up he does something that she has only been half expecting, as well as half dreading. He locks lips with her, if only for a brief second, but it is enough to create the wildest sensation in her. The kiss is just long enough to be described as passionate. The quality is superb, a mix of all too right and horrendously wrong (on the verge of being seductive in it's inappropriateness). She wakes, fully alert, and wants nothing more than to shove her hands south and produce that delightfully sinful gratification she has been craving for ages now.

But the frantic knocking on the opposite side of the door demands her immediate attention. When she slides the key under the door the last person she is expecting to unlock it is him, but when she sees his face in the real world so soon after her dizzying dream she nearly faints.

He says nothing and points at the couch. She sits, obedient as a dog.

The milk carton is a surprise.

Not just in it's cartoon-like strangeness, and not in the way he casually flings it at her, completely out of the blue like it's a surprise birthday gift, but how it represents a tremendous shock to her system, the second one in less than a day. When he throws the carton in her lap without comment and she looks down, it at first takes her a moment or two to realize. But when at last it hits her – the fact that somebody, lord only knows who, has registered her absence from work, from home, from life in the outside world, and thought to actually do something about it – it is like an instant reboot that shakes her out of some fanciful trance.

Soap opera coma vegetable bolts upright in bed; miraculous recovery, and the audience goes mad with applause.

"You know," He remarks apathetically, "I honestly had no idea they even still put pictures of missing people on milk cartons. How about that."

She gazes down at her picture, Martha Aiken several months ago with shorter hair and a dumb smile, and frowns.

"At the very least, I thought they only did kids." He adds, and without another word he leaves, almost as abruptly as he came.

Martha shuts her eyes and draws in a heavy breath. She has a whole new set of issues to worry about.

Thank you very much, Mr. Joker.


	8. Parties and Practical Jokes

CHAPTER 8: _PARTIES AND PRACTICAL JOKES_

The Joker is asexual, at least to the casual observer. He is liken to a monk in his lack of urges. While he _is_ human and he's had his share of women (easily obtained, believe it or not and all in the more socially acceptable manner), none of them have ever meant anything more to him than the physical relief they provided. And he certainly never kept any of them around for long periods of time, at least not in the past.

It is not unusual, however, for The Joker to become attached to any one thing or person. But attached in the sense that he favors it, or them, above others and occasionally looks forward to interactions with it (or said individual). Rather like a man enjoys owning a cat and patting it gently whenever it decides to come back to him. So seldom is this abnormal sight that his men think he is slightly robotic in his ways. They think things they would never voice; is he human, is he even _capable_ of affection, of sexuality?

Whereas he relies on mental stimulation, he more or less shuns physical stimulation unless it's absolutely necessary. Whenever the urge becomes too much of a burden to ignore, and it scarcely does (he has the inhuman ability to neglect almost any bodily necessity for ages on end without serious repercussion), he will see to himself in the usual manner. Afterward, following the rush of endorphins, he tends to get his more adrenaline-fueled ideas. During the act he often thinks of explosions, delightfully big and horrendously destructive. And he always plays his music, and it's _always_ Beethoven.

The Joker lays on the cot in his room, thinking. The arrival of the milk carton is just what was needed. Brought to him by one of his men who unknowingly collected it during a food run, it has made matters far less complicated than they were steadily becoming. Thank god for that. Up until now, Martha Aiken has become a substantial distraction, and up until the milk carton he has been preoccupied with trying to get himself back on track, a thing easier said than done, even for a man as diligent and disciplined as himself.

His stares up at the ceiling, thinking that his reaction to her haughty proclamation was entirely justified.

"Colmany on the corner of 22nd Street and Persian." He repeats to himself, doing his best impression of her voice. "You'll need men on the roof, won't you? You can't be the Batman. You're a different planet in the same solar system."

He chortles, wagging his head like an old woman. It had been the presumptive way in which she has suggested it that had driven him to do it, to slash at her with such wild contempt. Little insignificant Martha, thinking she could ever know more than he did, that she could ever be better at creating chaos than he was. The need to slice at her, to see her blood and bring reality back for both of them had been crippling, and he had given in to it, but that was not his major mistake. The major mistake had been lunging at her afterward. The major mistake had been allowing that one intrusive bit of physical contact that, at the time, had felt so alluring it would reduce him to a shaky, quivering fool afterward, and that would later break him from his concentration completely – not to mention keep him out of her room for days on end, almost afraid to interact with her for fear of a repeat incident, or the occurrence of a far more embarrassing one.

In all honesty Martha's ideas about a zip-line from Colmany to the rooftop of Gotham 1st National had been exactly what The Joker had needed to propel his plan into it's penultimate phase, with the final phase being it's execution. He had barked his official orders out that very night, and his men had been quick to act, going out into the city to find the necessary tools and items, warned to keep an ever-vigilant eye for the Batman who, unfortunately, had a knack for interfering with his lads during these odd little collection rounds. Most of the imperative equipment, particularly the zip-line objects, were procured from Mt. Pleasant, an outdoor hunting and hiking store on the north side of the city. Now he has just about everything set aside for the event, including the school bus. The timing has been planned down to the smallest of details. This meticulous behavior is part of his nature. That, and he has been using this massive preparation as an excuse not to think about what will need to be done with Martha Aiken. Truthfully, he has been ignoring the issue for far longer than he should be.

Now that everything has at last been sorted, save for the men he will be bringing with him to Gotham 1st National (those positions will need to be outsourced – for obvious, and fairy crucial reasons), his mind turns back to the milk carton, and Martha.

He has no need of her now that her usefulness has ended.

He has to get rid of her.

He has to get rid of her and move on with the plan. _But how?_ How does he get rid of her? Is he even capable of it at this point? He has trouble imagining what it will be like around the place without her. There would be far less crying, for one thing, and despite his charming personality he just wouldn't have the same unnerving effect on his men as he does on Martha. Granted, he commands their respect, and to extent their fear but . . . He sighs. It wouldn't be in the same. In all honesty her reactions to his performances are often times a major self esteem boost for him. He fears he will miss her cowering most of all.

He sighs again, remembering the death of the pizza delivery man, and her hysterical wailing. He chuckles fondly at the memory.

Sadly, Martha Aiken has become a constant part of The Joker's life, almost like a pet, and it's only just now becoming obvious to him. It is a mistake that needs immediate correcting. Luckily for him, the arrival of the milk carton was the catalyst that finally propelled him into action.

He stares up at the ceiling, deep in thought. He is going over the various contrasting options for what should be done with Martha (most of which include humiliating murder scenarios, coupled with one or two acts of tasteful compassion), when a terrific idea comes to him. In a heartbeat he's up and bounding across the room. Smiling, he waltzes down the corridor to the main dinning section. There he finds a group of men huddled by a large table, playing poker. They immediately pause their game at his spontaneous entrance.

"Gentlemen," He proclaims, that old spark returning to light him up, "Gentlemen, we're going shopping!"

If only Martha had seen the reports on television about the men in clown masks who robbed a well-known clothing store downtown, and the Party Supply shop just a few blocks over. If she had seen these reports she would have been able to wager a guess as to what was going to happen next. Unfortunately, Martha remains oblivious to the midnight robberies, and so when The Joker comes to her door the evening after wearing a suit of considerable taste and his widest grin, with a confusingly elegant dress for her to quickly change into (all the while pointing a German Luger at her belly), she is more than unsettled, to say the least. She changes quickly, back turned to him offering little argument, and he watches her don the form-fitting fabric in-between quick glances down at his polished shoes. He thinks little of the act of watching, of this exchange being any kind of voyeurism or how uncomfortable she might feel by his presence there while she changes. He's brought her to the bathroom before, seen her asleep and at her most vulnerable. She should have no reason to feel awkward around him.

And besides, witnessing her hasty (and relatively messy) removal of clothing leaves him unimpressed and feeling more impatient than aroused. Although he does permit himself to form a proper opinion once she's properly clothed.

The dress, he thinks, suits her – a deep plum color with thin straps and a low angular cut at the chest. She wears it well. He feels a small pang of pride at how well he chose.

Afterward, the blindfold is placed comfortably over her eyes, and she is lead down the hallway in her beautiful satin gown with the pistol held firmly against her back until they reach the door to his room. He lets her into his private sanctuary, and the harsh slam of the door behind them makes her jump.

She has no idea what's happening. It's been weeks since she's seen him, and the gun gives her a feeling of true foreboding, of certain doom. And the dress – the dress just confuses her.

When the blindfold comes off, her eyes meet the quaint picture of a table, one of the smaller circular ones from the dinning area, set with two places and a single, lit candle, with a pair of chairs on either side. This is not so out of place. What _does_ make the scene particularly strange are the balloons and streamers decorating the blank ceiling and back corners, their bright and friendly colors a severe contrast to the cold and otherwise empty look of the room.

Martha Aiken is at a loss.

She feels a slight building of pressure at her back as the pistol digs against her, a signal to sit down. She finds her place at the table and watches him take his. He finds his radio, under the table, and puts on something light – The Pines of Rome, he decides, will do. It's all very dream-like and she wonders if she's still asleep. He sits across from her, relaxed and smiling with one hand resting under his chin and the other keeping the gun aimed at the center of her forehead. She finds herself reminiscing about the last time he had a gun on her, and remembers the precipitous death of the pizza delivery goon. She trembles, pushing it out of her mind. At the center of a table, just next to the candle, is a large silver pan, covered by a rounded lid. Her eyes move away from it and land on the bucket of ice on the floor, something she missed earlier. She spies the bottle of wine and immediately straitens up, feeling all the more nervous. She has no idea where this is going.

"How do you like the decorations?" He asks her.

She takes a moment to look around again, and forces a smile. "They're nice."

"It was either this or more dead rats. But I figured you'd want something newer, _nicer_ for our little dinner."

She blinks.

"What's the occasion?"

"Going-away party." Quips The Joker.

He pulls the lid off the pan in one quick motion, revealing the rotten body of a dead pigeon. Martha shrieks and clamps her hand over her mouth to discontinue the high pitched sound.

The Joker nods his head with appreciation and says "The mayor of Gotham was very worried about a plague of pigeons in the city, you know. The mayor couldn't remove the pigeons from the city. Gotham's many citizens couldn't walk on the sidewalks or drive on the roads. It was costing a fortune to try to keep the streets and sidewalks clean. One day this man comes to City Hall and offers the Mayor a proposition. 'I can rid your beautiful city of its plague of pigeons without cost to the city. But, you have to promise not to ask me any questions. Or, you can pay me five million dollars and ask _one_ question.' The mayor considers the offer briefly and winds up accepting the free proposition. So, the next day the man climbs to the top of City Hall, opens his coat, and releases a blue pigeon. The blue pigeon circles around in the air a few times and flies up into the sky. All the pigeons in Gotham see this strange new, blue pigeon and gather up behind it. The Gotham pigeons follow the blue pigeon out of the city. The next day the blue pigeon returns completely alone to the man atop City Hall. The Mayor, well needless to say he's impressed. He thinks the man and the blue pigeon have performed a wonderful miraculous feat to rid Gotham of the plague of pigeons. And even though the man with the pigeon has charged nothing, the mayor presents him with a check for 5 million dollars and tells the man that, indeed, he did have a question to ask and even though they had agreed to no fee and the man had rid the city of pigeons, he decides to pay the 5 million just to get to ask one question. The man accepts the money and tells the mayor to ask his question."

Here The Joker pauses for dramatic effect.

Finally, he says "The mayor asked: 'Do you have a blue criminal?'"

Another pause, followed by the Joker's slow, monotonous cackling, cackling that builds until it becomes an uproar of wicked laughter. Martha is shocked to feel herself biting back a giggle – it was a funny joke, but still and all, here she now sits with a dead bird as her supper and a criminal as her date.

The wine is poured once The Joker stops laughing, only a little bit at first, and only in Martha's glass. He holds it up, sniffs it, and shoves it directly under her nose. Hesitant, she takes it and sips. Simple red wine from an unlabeled bottle, and not being one for wine, she continues to sip meagerly if only to avoid appearing rude.

"You know," The Joker begins conversationally, "I'm going to miss you, Martha Aiken."

She stops mid-gulp and eyes him carefully.

"It's true. I've grown accustomed to your face!" He bellows sing-song, making her swallow harshly. Seconds later he's grim and talking to her with an intense look of seriousness. "But you and I both know, it was never going to last."

He shakes his head and sighs.

"Pretty sad, really. I mean, I don't normally get attached to people. I don't even get attached to weapons! And I like weapons." He accentuates this fact by waving the gun around frantically. "But you know what they say . . . I mean, I don't, but you probably you. Drink your wine!" He shouts ecstatically.

"Where did it come from?" It's a bold question, but one worth asking. She waits on edge for his response.

"Why do you ask, Martha?"

"It's not from the wine cellar." She points out.

"Astute observation." He replies casually. "Take another sip and I'll tell you where it came from."

She goes to sip, pauses. "Did you poison it?"

"You tell me."

"Did you?"

Impatient, he kicks the ice bucket, sending it sliding haphazardly across the floor to topple and spill.

"I could put you out another way, you know." He declares curtly, leering. "I could shoot you in the knee, and apart from it being a relatively boring wound, the pain will be so severe that you'll pass out, _like that_."

He snaps his fingers to illustrate his point and her eyes go wide.

"But," He continues, easing back in to his seat, "I went to all the trouble of stealing the wine, and the decorations. So the least you could do is be thankful, and stop asking so many questions. Questioning life takes the surprise out of it, Martha." He finishes, chuckling cruelly.

She drinks.

"That's better."

"You're going to kill me." She remarks flatly, numbness returning as she ponders her fate.

"You think so?"

"I don't know what I think anymore. I feel like Alice talking to the Caterpillar. Like I'm not even myself anymore." She admits.

"Oh! Alice in Wonderland! I love that story." He proclaims loudly, clapping his hands together like an excited child. "You know, I once knew a man who used to dress up as the Mad Hatter. It's true, he would put on the enormous hat and bow tie, the whole get-up, and lure little girls in to this old abandoned play park, and –"

All at once he stops and smiles, tongue darting out to wet the corner of his mouth.

"On second thought, best we keep the dinner conversation delicate, eh?"

She takes another sip of wine and starts to notice her vision blurring. She shakes it off, determined.

"Are you going to kill me or not?" She says finally.

He shakes his head, clicks his tongue. "Martha, Martha, Martha. Why so serious? Hasn't your little stay here taught you anything?"

"It's not that I want control." She explains. "I can't even remember what control feels like anymore. Why would I want it now?"

It's the truth, sadly.

"I think I deserve to know, though. I think I deserve to be told."

He motions for her to drink up and she nods, continuing to sip.

"It was a big decision for me." He tells her calmly, almost as if he's gloating. "I even asked some of the men about it. No, that's a lie. I asked all of them. Everybody had a different opinion. Do you want to know what the majority vote was?"

She nods.

"Drink your wine, and I'll tell you."

He reaches across the table, fills her glass, and she drinks it down in one continuous chug. He quirks an eyebrow, impressed, and proceeds to fill it again. By now she's beginning to really feel it. Whatever he's put into this drink is strong, and his face, along with the rest of the detail and clarity, has begun to melt away into vagueness.

"I feel strange."

He puts on his very best, Shakespearean accent and recites "There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in proportion."

"Francis Bacon?" She hiccups, and he nods, pleased. "The denseness and the strangeness of the world is absurd." She tells him, not bothering to mention the fact that it's Albert Camus' quote and not her own. Although, given the current circumstances, she can be forgiven. Everything has started to spin, but the dizziness, she finds, is not entirely unpleasant. There's something about it all that feels warm, hot even. It's spreading throughout her from the center, like an amiable, inner blanket smothering her into languidness.

"Well? What did your men tell you to do with me?" She manages, floundering.

"You have to be gotten rid of, I'm afraid."

She shakes her head. "I agree with you. It's not safe to keep me here anymore. I'm a liability." She slurs this last word so severely that she sounds like a drunken sorority girl. How embarrassing, and she used to be such a respectable young banker.

"You're a lovely lump that became a tumor, Martha. You were a well of knowledge but now you've sprung a delightful little leak." He pauses a moment, licks his lips. "The majority vote was that I should plug you right here and now. One of them even offered to do it for me, take care of you, the mess, the whole thing. Isn't that nice?"

She doesn't answer. Keeps drinking. It's becoming surreal. In a way it's maybe even soothing. She misses him grab the bottle and take a heavy swig directly from it, and the giggles start when he puts his feet on to the table, nearly knocking the candle off.

"What's so funny?" It comes out as more of a comment than a question as he waves the wine bottle in the one hand and holds the gun perfectly steady with the other.

She points down at the dead pigeon. "I remembered your joke."

"Dear god, you're just now developing a sense of humor." He takes another heavy swig. "The boys were right. I should put you out of your misery."

"Go ahead, but remember to make it look like an accident."

"Don't insult me, Martha." He retorts, playfully feigning offense.

"What do we have here, officer?" She asks in a deep baritone. "Well, chief," She answers, voice raspy and young. "It looks like she strangled herself to death."

She continues to snicker, too tipsy to notice his delighted reaction to the sound of her ridiculousness. He had no idea she was even capable of laughter, let alone the kind of absurdity she was now displaying. The sight of it tickles him. He finds it both interesting, and incredibly annoying. He wonders when he'll loose interest completely and make the move to shut her up.

"She backed in to a knife ten times!" She adds, placing splayed fingers awkwardly over open lips to try and stifle her own mad tittering. "She clubbed herself with a baseball bat on purpose!"

"She fell down an elevator shaft on to some bullets." He suggests quietly, amused and smiling as he aims the gun directly at her and cocks the hammer back.

By now she's rolling. She sees the gun and in-between gasps for breath says "Go ahead. I'll die laughing."

It's this last remark that does it, that sends him to his feet and around the table without warning, gun barrel drawn. In an instant he's pulled the trigger, and her laughter has suddenly stopped. Time stands still, and the eons of silence eventually cave to The Joker's boisterous laughter, much higher pitched and manic than her own had been. The large red banner hanging from the gun barrel reads BANG in brightly colored letters. The evidence of the practical joke sits inches from her fingers, which are now trembling.

She runs.

One sloppy, staggering lunge toward the door. She hits it hard and wrenches it open, shaken and sobbing, past the point of hysteria, but before she can exit his hand is on the surface of the portal, slamming it back shut. She screams, startled, and whirls around to see him pressing up against her, the pop-gun forgotten on the floor some feet away. She is trapped by his long arms on either side, and tries to duck out from under him. Following the failed attempt she hits at him repeatedly, cursing and crying and laughing all at the same time, now totally broken inside. He takes her weak pummeling with a certain amount of tolerant grace. Finally, he lifts one hand and harshly grabs her chin, holding her in place so that their eyes lock. She grasps his wrist with both hands and tries with her last remaining ounce of strength to push his hand off of her face. The effort does little good. Eventually she stops fighting and goes rigid. There is some strange witchcraft in his eyes – and she is hypnotized again.

For a time he simply stares at her, eyes bright and calculating, tracing the tear stains down her cheeks, observing the various wrinkles and bruises and scars that have made her new face. He recalls when he made her put the makeup on. Better yet, he remembers when he first picked her photograph out of the pile of Gotham 1st National Employees his men had stealthily compiled for him at his request. She had been the perfect candidate. Even then he could tell, but now so much has changed.

His stare is hard and penetrating. She glares back, hatred and loathing and all manner of venomous scorn bubbling in her innards. There is something else there too. It registers in her mind that he is very close, unbelievably close, and that his touch is warm. She can smell his cologne, something she faintly admits she's never minded, and his breath, hot on her face, carries his scent as well. It is somehow not altogether disagreeable. In a split second her mind centers on what can be done, what should be done – what must be the only real option. She remembers the dream, the last one she had about him and, ignoring all self argument, she gives one last shove, not to remove his hand from her person, but pushing herself physically in to him until their lips suddenly meet and crush together haphazardly. She can only partially understand what this should accomplish. She reasons it will throw him off – she can't tell if it does, and she can't tell if he likes it, but at the very least she can feel proud knowing that she did something he certainly wasn't expecting, something he could have never predicted her to do.

He receives her kiss stiffly, and in this awkward commencing she can not read him.

At first he does very little, nothing to pull her off, nothing to tighten the contact. But then, to her amazement, his grip on her chin loosens. His opposite arm slackens, allowing him to press closer in to her, and before either of them can comprehend what's going on a passion is building between them.

He tries his best to rationalize it in his own, demented way. The inner argument is almost similar to that of a high school debate team. She isn't even that attractive, or smart. And yet, here she is reciprocating, seemingly not the least bit disgusted. He wonders if it has been her conscious decision to initiate the kiss, or if it is primarily the drug and the drink. He hopes she doesn't vomit. He considers pulling away – he ought to, especially if it _is_ the drink or the drug acting on her behalf. Then again, he's been working so hard, he's earned a break. He thinks about his own self imposed chastity and groans into her.

He finds her soft and warm and incredibly enticing. The kiss evolves from one of chaste, almost timid limpness to a moving, lively thing. Some fire has been lit here, a firework display has been set off. Before he knows what he's doing he's pressed her lips opens with his tongue and slide inside of her mouth, and the surge of taste he receives is phenomenal. His senses tingle. He catches a strong whiff of her, of her hair, and _oh_ she smells good. He hasn't done this in _ages_. God help him, he's been so preoccupied with the Batman and the ruining of Gotham that he's nearly forgotten how good this kind of interaction feels. He plays Beethoven's 9nth in his head and is surprised to find it fits the moment perfectly.

Martha feels his hands shift down quickly and then the base of her dress is being impatiently hiked up until her legs and hips are exposed. She decides she doesn't care and wraps her arms around his neck, dragging his now slightly hunched form back up to her. Their tongues mingle and at one point she breaks away slightly to spread a trail of kisses across his right cheek, using his Chelsea-grin as a guide. This small, simple act is a hard slap in the face that sends him hurtling back in to reality.

_Wait just a minute, now, folks._

He pulls away quickly. She watches with confused eyes as he scampers across the floor and snatches up the gun.

"What are you –"

The butt of the toy-Luger cuts her off mid sentence, hitting her directly in the head, sending it snapping back. Her body crumples, and she is reduced to an unconscious heap at his feet. He stands over her, hair an unkempt mess, sweat spoiling his makeup, not sure of whether or not to laugh or scream.

One thing is for certain; it's all become considerably more complicated now.


	9. Evolution and Exercise

Another update. It has come to my attention that this story has become slightly more cerebral than originally intended. For that I apologize, although I'm only assuming that this may not be to everybody's liking. While this chapter has some fluff (mostly Joker related), I'll probably go back in and try to apply more to other chapters, though, when I have the time. I've always believed less is more, but even I have found myself wanting. So again, apologies for lack of fluff, but I hope you enjoy nonetheless.

. . .

CHAPTER 9: _EVOLUTION AND EXERCISE_

She's evolved.

Martha Aiken has slowly become less of a distraction, and more of an outright dilemma in the eyes of The Joker. A wonderful, irritating, stimulating, agitating dilemma almost comparable to the Batman.

He paces back and forth, footsteps echoing off the linoleum and somehow matching the rhythmic dripping of the faucets. He stops to eye his reflection in one of the broken bathroom mirrors, wishing he could go back into the office and sneak a peak at one of the dozens of newspaper clippings of the Batman. If he could only just see one of those blurry, black and white photographs – if he could only just read a headline or two about the so-called "Caped Crusader", as the papers have dubbed him, then he is sure this new dilemma would resolve it's self in no time flat. He needs the reminder, and he knows it. He would be back on track, knowing that there was somebody else out there like him – somebody else who felt they had to hide their face for whatever deranged reason, somebody else who felt they had to adopt a secondary persona in order to have a decent excuse for their utter lack of sanity. And besides, how could he pass up the opportunity to screw with someone so blatantly against the kind of chaos he was capable of producing?

He smiles at himself. It's no good.

If he could just go back into his office and reacquaint himself with the Batman, the entire point behind all of his actions since his escape from Arkham would come back to him, and some semblance of clarity regarding his true priorities would hopefully return. Of that, he is positive.

Turning swiftly he puts his hands over his face, overly dramatic with every movement, as though he's mimicking the theatrical attitude of a famed diva. It bothers him that he can feel himself slipping, and the lack of explanation behind his poor performance doesn't help either. He feels helpless, and he just wants a picture of the god damned Batman to throw some darts at, maybe draw a mustache on. Just to perk himself up.

He contemplates going to get one, storming down the hallway like a spoiled boy, mommy I want my toy _now!_ But he can't. He refuses to set foot in there again.

In hind sight it was a silly idea to store _all_ of the articles in one place, his office in the wine cellar, but he can do nothing about it. He knows that if he returns to the wine cellar he'll see Martha there, cowering like some kind of wounded animal and rubbing the bruise he'd given her at their climax several nights before, and he'll do it again. He'll do what he did during their little dinner date, and he isn't sure if he'll be able to stop himself a second time.

He stares at himself, pondering the problem in it's simplified version.

If somebody, anybody, is now out and about looking for dear, sweet little Martha he has a limited amount of time left to house her. Eventually, he will have to let her go. He has received a wealth of useful information from her, more than he could possibly need, and therefore has no more reason to keep her here at his little hide-out. Her usefulness is expired, as anything else she tells him will only be a repeat of something she's said in the past, highlights of things he already knows. Sure, he could continue to keep her, lying to her that he needs to know more about Gotham 1st National, about the Colmany building even, but even if she didn't see right through the lies, even if he somehow made her believe that her little going away party had just been one big funny joke, sooner or later they'd come for her, and find him as well. He's good, but even the best of criminals can still get caught.

The Joker withdraws his knife from his trouser pocket and pokes at the blade, curious. He pushes down with the tip of his index finger until he draws blood. He hardly notices the pain, and rubs it together between his thumb and forefinger until he is no longer intrigued.

Despite the completeness of the plan and readiness of his men, nothing has been done about Gotham 1st National whatsoever. Not a single one of his men knows how close he is to putting his plan into motion. He has purposefully neglected to tell them, but he knows he can't stall forever. The excuses he gives are good, and for the most part fairly believable, but sooner or later one of them will start asking questions, and pick apart his reasoning until all that's left is this awful Martha issue.

The Joker wipes the blood on his lapel and groans.

He recalls it, Martha's skin against his tongue, the taste of her and how disconcertingly tantalizing it was. He is fully aware that her little move in to him was impulsive. He himself is impulsive. And why shouldn't he be? If everybody insisted on calling him insane, why should he disappoint them by not acting the way they all expected him to?

The bittersweet memory has plagued him for days, it's beginning to become vexing, especially now that he knows he has to give her back. He is well aware that he should be focused on more important things, on working out the last few kinks of the master plan, on assembling his men and briefing them on the strategies of the execution. On finding out the identity of the Batman and ruining Gotham in the process. On figuring out the best thing to do with Martha. But so far he can't seem to think a single coherent thought.

He hears the footsteps of one of his men as they pass by the bathroom entrance. Raising his head, he reflects on how he has been a ghost in the presence of his underlings as of late, barely there at all save for fleeting instances in the hallway or bathroom. He has avoided them at all costs, giving them orders from his private room via small pieces of notepaper, passed down from goon to goon like a Chinese whisper, and occasionally coming to dinner only to repeat the excuses as to why Gotham 1st National has not yet become a reality. So far, he has been a train derailed, and he is worried that his men are beginning to suspect his internal struggle. He figures they still fear him, but fear without respect is meaningless.

His finger is still bleeding. He puts it to his mouth and sucks; it's not the same, his blood is a poor substitute for hers. He yearns for her taste. He turns back to the mirror, eyes miserable and grim but face grinning as usual. He won't admit it verbally, but somewhere in the back of his mind it is announced that he wants her, wants to have at her again, although whether it's only with himself or a knife he can't be sure.

The Joker is not a stupid man, far from it. There have been women in his life, and he has handled them all in more or less the same way. He is and only ever has been human, but never has he allowed a woman to burrow so deeply under his skin and divert him from his habits. Never has he allowed a woman to put him off of his objective like this. He is both irate and obsessed. Up until now thoughts of passion did not burden him, not until recently, and even if they had he would have ignored them, pushing all distractions aside to focus on his master plan. That, and he detests the act, not out of resentment, he could get a woman easily (believe it or not), and not out of physical reasons (all the plumbing works just fine). Rather, he detests the act out of practical reasons. His reasoning is this; why have sex when you could be causing pain, wreaking havoc, making things go _ka-boom_. Sure sex is nice, but is it as nice as pouring a tank of gasoline over a box of pigeons, tossing a lighted match, and watching the burning birds fly off into the sky?

Up until now he's been as steady as a rock. Up until he sampled Martha Aiken.

Now look where he is.

Standing in a bathroom with his hands on his face and trying to solve a brand new problem, unfamiliar and difficult with no funny side to it whatsoever. How depressing. What's worse, he's allowed himself to get attached. He feels like slamming his head against the basin of the sink again and again until his nose crumples in and his teeth fall out. He is attracted to her, despite the fact he does not want to be, but this strange craving she has brought out in him is simply too strong to tune out.

He could have dumped her out in the middle of nowhere after she collapsed. That had been his initial plan, at any rate. It had taken him ages to decide, but when he had finally had the idea of releasing her into the wild, it was a simple, elegant solution. He could have sent for one of his men and ordered her to be taken away, to wherever they saw fit, the moment she passed out. He could have washed his hands of her right then and there, but he didn't. He chose to bring her back to her room and lay her carefully back on the couch and leave without word. And now here he stands, well aware that it's become nearly impossible for him to even consider giving her up, not until he's had her fully, at any rate. A horrifying thought strikes him. What if he does it, has his way with her, and afterward he _still_ can't bring himself to give her up? What then? Does he make her his approved drug, his addiction? Dress her in some ridiculous costume like himself, make her his side-kick, his partner? Perhaps give her a collar and leash, make it official that she's his pet. He isn't even sure anymore if he wants a companion. He isn't sure if he wants her for sex or if it's something else, something he dreads to interpret.

After a time the Joker straitens up and utters "To hell with it." and tries waving away his thoughts as though they're flies buzzing around his head. If only it were that easy.

He decides to test this new theory. For all the 'what ifs' in the world, he retires to his room, locks the door, and turns Beethoven on until the volume is at it's peak. He plays with himself, thinking about Martha. About her soft lips, her smooth legs, about shoving the base of the dress past her hips and bucking into her. He thinks about how she might wriggle slightly under him as he bends down and removes the unnecessary garments from her body. He centers on the noises she might make if he were to take his tongue and please her that way, the way some women like best. He wonders how long it would take to make her moan, one long, singing, quivering sound that announces the height of her satisfaction. He pictures himself drawing the knife at that precise moment and carving a beautiful, violent little smile across her face and shoving himself in to her simultaneously, and can't help but think that the combination of pain and pleasure would likely appeal to her. He knows it appeals to _him_.

All at once it's blood and pain and glee and sensation and he pictures himself moving within her. It doesn't take long for him to reach his apex, a combination of how long it's been since he did anything even remotely like this, and how strongly he wants to with Martha. The pinnacle takes him over the edge and leaves him shaky and tranquil.

The aftermath finds him sprawled out on the bed, heavy lidded and breathing hoarse and hot. He scans his mind for Martha, and to his despair, he finds she's still there, whole and unbroken, still as troubling a thought as ever. If anything, the act of self release has made her even more prominent in his head.

He yawns, strangely sleepy. He considers doing it again, and finds, to his surprise, that he seems more than physically able. He does so (twice in a row, he hasn't done it twice in a year, let alone twice in a _day_) and once again the finale leaves his pupils pleasantly dilated and the skin below his makeup febrile and flushed, with a pool of stickiness splashed across his stomach he hasn't the energy left to wipe away. Still, she remains, and despite his frustration (both sexual and otherwise) at his own ability to solve this little problem, he seems relaxed. There's more than one way to unwind, and some leave him less tense than sticking cats in the microwave.

In his mind he rehearses what he'll tell the boys when he goes to dinner, halfway between deciding whether or not he should even attend the evening meal. He supposes he ought to kick things into gear now, at any rate. He ought to, but he probably won't. His thoughts still partially on Martha as he drifts languidly in to an afternoon nap, he wonders how she's taking this new and thrilling – if not incredibly agonizing – twist in their relationship.

Martha Aiken stands in the center of the wine cellar, totally naked.

She holds her gutter rags in both hands, preparing.

There are no mirrors. If she could only see herself now, she would see how considerably she's changed.

Her hair is longer, her skin is pale from lack of sunlight, and while her weight loss has not been substantial it is still relatively noticeable. And almost everything about her personality has changed. If she had the option to really step back and study herself, she would be highly alarmed at how different she has become. Her reactions to most situations now are radically unlike her. Whereas before she was a nervous, frightened little mouse caught dumbly in a trap, now her captivity is entirely too familiar, and she feels more like a zoo tiger who is not necessarily content with its situation, but not quite willing to do anything to change it either.

If she could see herself, she would see how unrecognizable a human being she has become.

The Joker had meant to let her go that night. Of that she is certain. Sure, it could have been one big elaborate joke to destroy the rest of her spirit, but her instinct tells her differently. He had meant to let her go that night, probably after the wine had sent her off to sleep like had been intended. And why not? She'd said it during their little date; ever since the milk carton arrived she had become a liability to him. But things had gone wrong very quickly, and before she had any grasp of what her body was doing, she was shoved up against a wall, clinging to the shaking mass of a madman who was her captor – sucking at his face like some despicable high school slut. The idea had been her own, but the courage to take the initiative had come from the wine.

What was worse was that she'd enjoyed it. She knows she had because even when she woke up she could remember it all in vivid perfection, despite the confusion and the remnants of the drugs. Her body just wouldn't forget. And she knew that he had enjoyed it too. She'd felt him coming alive under her at the time it was all happening, felt the pressure of that particular part of him straining against her thigh and begging to be more a part of what they'd been doing than was appropriately allowed. What a fool she'd been to have started them off like that, for in doing so she has condemned herself to spend the rest of her life as his captive, despite her ended usefulness. She knows he will keep her now no matter what the cost, even if it destroys him. Her instinct tells her so.

Either that, or he'll kill her. But, she reasons, surely he would have done that already. If not now, soon.

Her only chance is to escape.

But she is torn between wanting to stay with him and wanting to return to her normal life. She bows her head and takes a deep breath, trying desperately to break away from her own mind. Her gown, the one she'd worn on the night of her sin, sits in a disheveled pile on the opposite side of the room. She goes to the door and places the palm of one hand against the cool wood. Deranged dreams had plagued her after he'd left her on the couch, each nightmarish vision filled with grotesque, sexual undertones, and all of them featuring him, most likely a result of their friction and the drugs wearing off, but she had held strong against her body's raging hunger for most of the day. Now, she is determined to ignore it, hoping to retrieve her levelheadedness and begin composing a decent plan.

As her other hand travels down her midsection to rest between her parted legs, she thinks of him, of the kiss and of that part of him pressing against her thigh. Her fingers halt before they reach their destination, and she growls angrily. She brings her hand up to her mouth and bites down, hard, until she draws blood.

_No_, she thinks. _My climax will come with the accomplishment of my escape – nothing more_.

She begins to clothe herself, putting a pair of dirty trousers on first, and repeating the act two more times with a tank top and shirt, picturing him inside her, thrusting fast and hard, pumping away at her like a machine, every touch sending a bolt of pleasure throughout her insides until at last she collapses to the floor, forehead resting weakly against the wood and face crumpled into hot frustration.

"God damn it." She mutters, "Get a grip, Martha. You have to get out of here. You need to _leave now_."

The Joker doesn't visit her at all today, nor do his men. She does not expect any of them to, and is thankful for the privacy. The day after finds her back on that previous routine, where she sees nothing of The Joker and little of the men, save for when they bring her food and clothing. She registers something about the men, however. Each one who greets her with a fresh meal or clean garment seems confused as to why she is still there. She never questions any of them, just sits back, lets them enter and exit, all the while confident that he really had meant to let her go, and if it hadn't been for her, she would now be free.

Regardless of how much he disgusts her, and how much she is oddly attracted to him, she is positive that the only way she will ever see the light of day again, is if she does it all herself. But she is scared, alone, confused, and not entirely sure of herself. Nevertheless, her escape, she decides, _must_ happen.

"It has to," She declares resolutely in to the emptiness of the wine cellar. "I'm not going to die down here. Not like this."

Exercise becomes the second passion of Martha Aiken, and escape her first. She works her body until all remaining strength and energy are depleted, and every night for three weeks she retires to bed sore and sapped. But after a time she begins to sense a change, both in her physicality and her attitude. She is becoming stronger, harder, more confident. Granted, she is still miles away from being free, and she recognizes this, but she also begins to recognize freedom as an obtainable goal.

Martha Aiken's revolution is this; the thing that happened on their little dinner date frightens her, but it gives her power over him too, because she knows that he wants her just as much as she wants him. For the first time since the entire ordeal began, she has a weapon to use against him, and because she's lasted this long with him, her fear of him has dwindled now into a tepid insecurity. He has ceased to be the curious monster he was, and now she views him as a small, semi-threatening man with scars and a predisposition for practical jokes – still dangerous, but no more so than he was to begin with. The only difference now is she can fight back, and she means to do so.

She plots. She does not request more crayons or paper, but keeps a series of notes in her mind, a selection of film-like mental projections that she replays over and over again in her head, tweaking here, revising there until she begins to see the semblance of a halfway decent plan emerge.

The Joker has memorized the exact position of almost every signal object, both big and small, both significant and insignificant, in the room. But Martha knows that he hasn't been in to visit her in a good while, and even then his visits were short and his attention elsewhere. She begins to wonder if he is capable of forgetting. She remembers when she first arrived, how she made the mistake of accidentally picking up a newspaper article and curiously examining it – and the frightening reaction she saw from him. His threat was deathly serious. He would kill her if she did it again, if she dared to move something else from his desk. Given this most rent series of events, she figures his threat may no longer be so brutal. But she knows she has to try. It is essential to her plan.

Martha Aiken has spent more than enough time in this cold, cramped place to have memorized the meticulous placing of each and every item as well. Alert and cautious, she takes the knife off the wall in the dead of night. Nobody sees her carefully dig the blade in to the pages of "A Clockwork Orange". Nobody hears her softly carve a simple gun-shaped slot, hidden and secure, out of the paper. And when she's finished and the knife has been placed back in to it's original place alongside the others, nobody knows the better. When the men come the following morning, meals in hand and grim-faced, she sits at the far side of the couch protectively hunched over the cushion, below which sits her book, her plan partly accomplished.

She says nothing and moves little, stone-still like a peeping owl, until each man leaves. Even as she eats she remains prudent, fearing that at any moment The Joker will burst in and see the knives on the wall on the opposite side of the room and _know_, somehow, by some word of God or psychic sense that she has been planning her crafty escape.

But he does not come, and after three and a half days her worry subsides and she begins to relax, self-assurance building.

Finally, she works up her courage and calls him. She makes not one, but four separate requests, demanding to see him specifically. The first of the four men she asks ignore her, as does the second and third (this is hardly an unexpected response), whereas the fourth man cocks his head and eyes her for a long while before finally disappearing out of the room. Moments later The Joker sweeps in, kicking the door open with a single, rigid move of his leg, face the perfect example of sinister temperament. He keeps his eyes on her, almost unblinking. Surreal alpha-male display of dominance. He doesn't glance away, not once. It's as much a test of himself as it is of her, and she meets his steely gaze with her own determined defiance.

Without waiting for him to ask she immediately launches in to an elaborate lie.

"One of your guards tried to grab at me. I can identify him if you want, but I don't think I should be treated that way. I haven't done anything wrong, I haven't done anything to warrant it. In fact, I've been incredibly cooperative, especially recently, and I've been more than generous with the liberties I've allowed you and your men to take with me."

She pauses a moment and catches his intense, glaring scowl. He's staring daggers of death at her, probably for the 'liberties' remark and the fact that he was mentioned _as well as_ his men. And why not? After all, he's certainly as guilty of the aforementioned crimes as her fictionalized assailant is.

Martha swallows, throat dry, and continues unabashed.

"Frankly, I'm insulted. I don't know what you told them about me, how good I was – I don't know, maybe you gave them the green light for it. But if I'm meant to stay here, I deserve a little more respect, and I want to know what you're going to do about it."

She hopes what she's said has been frank enough to inspire the correct response from him.

He grins, pert, pinched lips, a forced courtesy smile, and calls in his man from the hallway.

Martha Aiken blinks.

The Joker has drawn his weapon in a flash, and there is not enough time for the man from the hallway to appropriately react before the bullet sends the back of his head spraying beautifully across the corridor and on to the adjacent wall.

Martha and The Joker, gun drawn, watch as the man drops with a thick thud to the floor.

"Was that him?" Asks The Joker, smoothly lowering the pistol.

It takes her a second to find her voice, and when she finally does she is surprised at how loud and unaffected her words sound.

"No. It was somebody else."

Death; how passé.

She cringes when he stamps his foot down angrily like a small child.

"Well he's gonna have to do! I'm a little busy at the moment! Other things to attend to, ya know. The world doesn't revolve around Martha Aiken, I'm sorry to say." He replies, observably annoyed.

She says nothing, nods, and before she can fully respond he's gone again, out of the room as quickly as he'd entered. It's ages before somebody comes to retrieve the body and give her back the key. In that time Martha considers several things. The Joker had not batted an eye at the fact she had taken one of the knives from the wall and replaced it, which meant one of two things. Either he has been too distracted (by events in or outside the room) to have recognized it's tampering, or he had temporarily lost that sharpness he had previously caught the misplaced article with. In any case, he had not noticed, and this helps her relax slightly, although not by much. This means The Joker is a fallible man, and a fallible man at the very least can be tricked.

When somebody does finally come to drag the corpse away, they don't notice the absence of the dead man's firearm, and even then they leave the blood in a large pool for Martha to see to afterward. She neglects it for some time in favor of stashing the gun, and having carved the dimensions of the hole through rough calculation, she is monumentally relieved to find it fits almost perfectly. Her luck, she thinks, has been unbelievable.


	10. Clarity

CHAPTER 10: _CLARITY_

The Joker's scars do not regularly draw attention. Well, they do, but it is the kind of backward attention that is more helpful than harmful. For example, people see the repulsive injuries on his naked face and quickly look away, although whether this reaction tends to be out of disgust or out of pity, The Joker can never entirely tell – nor does he entirely care. Still and all, for safety's sake, he has decided to cover the lower half of his face with a silky, purple scarf. The wide-brimmed gentleman's fedora, coupled with the trailing black trench coat make him look like some 40's era gangster strait out of a black and white snuff film. Even without the makeup or visible scars, he can still appear menacing.

He paces the brisk streets of Gotham leisurely, breath rising into the air as he moves, continuing the walk which began the night before. Besides the occasional exhausted slug moving home from the night shift, the city is mostly vacant. Eerily so, but it isn't long before the morning work rush will commence, maybe an hour or so. He avoids the main roads, finding his way through the labyrinth of backstreets and alleyways. He moves like a phantom, gliding along with steps covertly hushed. At one point he finds a stray brick and launches it through the window of a shop not yet open. The sound of shattering glass along with the small explosions from the television sets on display make his knees wobbly, and for a fraction of a second his mind is free of the repetitive Martha-related thoughts that seem to plague him so consistently.

His ultimate goal is Gotham 1st National, but he is in no hurry to get there. At the moment, he is simply enjoying a nice, carefree stroll. Something to take his mind off of everything, especially the one invading thought in particular. Despite this hesitance, his goal is a necessary one. He is set on casing the bank just the one final time, before the robbery, as a safety precaution. He wants to feel solid about everything – solid about _something_, given the last week or so of torturous uncertainty.

When at last he arrives he strides into the bank casually, owning an air of streetwise sophistication, a kind of confidence that (along with his outfit) set him apart from the other early bird customers. He proceeds to stand in line, observing the tellers, trying to make eye contact with the other people, and is slightly hurt when nobody bothers to give him a second glance. He is there for all of five minuets before faking the huffy sighs of the impatient and storming out.

On his way back to the delicatessen, he is caught in the small beginnings of the crowds. He spots people waiting at the bus stops, men in suits b-lining for the underground, their numbers all steadily growing, and the amount of cabs in traffic increasing as well. Along the way he pauses at an intersection and a newspaper stand at the corner catches his full attention. After the delicate use of his five-finger discount he walks away with a paper containing a detailed article about the Batman, something he has been yearning for since that first kiss with Martha. He thumbs through the pages as he walks, waning concentration playing havoc with his speed. When he finds the story he stops dead in the middle of the sidewalk, earning the annoyed grumblings of confused passersby. The article includes a veritable bevy of information pertaining not to the caped crusader specifically, but rather, the rising number of random citizens who have taken to disguising themselves in his image. These copycats would apparently take to the darkened streets of Gotham in the same pattern as the Batman, in an effort to help him, and prove their worth as heroic vigilantes.

The Joker looks slowly up from the paper, scanning the bustling throng that now moves around him. Any one of them could be the Batman, or a Bat-Impostor. Under the scarf, he smiles.

So, there's not just one anymore. Others have been inspired.

All at once, the clouds part, and his sky is crystal blue again. He has achieved clarity, he has regained his vision of a perfectly chaotic world, and once again, he owes it all to the Batman.

What was this city _coming to_? Where was the disorder, the chaos, the maddening fear? What good was it all now, being so safe and predictable? How many more masks did this city have to put on before somebody called shenanigans. And what was worse, they were ordinary people dressing up now. Putting on the masks. This wasn't as exciting as it was insulting. Supposing The Joker wound up with a bunch of doppelgängers when all was said and done. No, he decides. They needed reminding. _He_ needed to help them see that – underneath it all – they were all as selfish and destructive as he was. It has been his purpose all along. How could he have been so blind to have lost it, even momentarily, when it was so obviously all around him?

In a peculiar move that strikes those around him as un-mentionably odd, The Joker hugs the paper to his chest, so happy he feels like crying (or stabbing, he hasn't the head to try and choose).

He returns to the delicatessen with a noticeable skip in his step, and at once begins making telephone calls. He calls five men in total (two on the roof, one bus driver, and two in the car, himself not included), all outsiders and none first-timers. He has done his research on those chosen, positive that these candidates are the right ones for the job, the only ones capable of helping him pull off this kind of heist exactly how he pictures it. Each man is given notice to wait for a package in the mail. Said package would contain specific equipment for their individually assigned job, and specific directions for that individual, as well as a mask to wear on the occasion. No one man would get the same directions or equipment. The package would also contain a small portion of a large payment, with the rest to be paid, in full, proceeding the success of the robbery (because no knowledgeable criminal would dare take on a job this risky without a little taste of cash first). None of them would ever see his face, or know who he was – even during the robbery. This is a key part of his strategy, and he reassures himself with each dialed number that everything will indeed go according to plan. As he hangs up the phone in the kitchen he begins to laugh, high-pitched and menacing, and his men come and gather around him like a flock to their calling shepherd. They stand around him in a semicircle, wordlessly awaiting direction. They receive it in abundance, and afterward, as they are filing out to begin their various chores, The Joker grabs one of the younger faced lads – some boy who had managed his way out of Arkham alongside The Joker – and tells him to acquire a pack of playing cards.

"Where from, boss?"

"Any place. Any deck. Just get them." Orders The Joker, voice darkly energetic.

Martha Aiken would receive the pack of playing cards within the same hour the boy returned with them.

"Eat up." The thug grumbles to her as she sits on the couch in the wine cellar, eying the blandly colored food on the tray that has just been dropped rather roughly down in front of her.

"Thanks," She replies flatly, and goes back to her reading.

The thug snorts and exits, and Martha Aiken has her head down when the next person enters, nose pointed to the pages of "Call of the Wild". Thinking it is the goon back to return the key and close the door, she pays him no notice whatsoever. It is not until she hears him clear his throat that she realizes who it is. Her head jerks up and their eyes lock. Her blood hums sickly sweet.

"They've replaced you," The Joker begins furtively, "With a blonde. Her name is Penny." He adds with a chuckle.

Upon hearing him speak she leaps to her feet, back strait and standing at full attention.

"Penny, at a bank. Get it? I daresay she's even better looking than you are."

His eyes roam over her and she shivers. She watches him fish something small out of his left side pocket.

"Happy birthday." He sings, tossing her the bicycle deck.

"It's not my birthday." She informs him absentmindedly after catching the deck. She turns it over in her hands several times before bringing it up to her nose to sniff at it, as if checking to see if it isn't somehow booby-trapped. Finally, she says "Oh, good. I was getting sick of books."

This mumbled sentence is not without a trace of scorn.

"I thought you might be." He replies, licking at the corner of his mouth. "Have a seat. I'd like to talk."

She sits down quickly, making sure to position herself over the correct seat cushion. His visit is totally unexpected, and she has no idea what is going to happen. As he approaches she curls her legs up to her stomach in a feeble effort to appear polite, as well as take up as little room as possible for him. To her surprise, he takes a seat on the coffee table, swinging his legs around and resting back on his wrists to face her. He looks like some sort of bazaar high school guidance counselor ready for a heart-to-heart with a misbehaving student.

He has not yet painted his face for the day – this somehow makes it less difficult for her. Even though he is certainly more attractive this way (she failed to notice just how handsome he was the last time he took the makeup off), she associates the dinner date and kiss with his other face, his clown persona. She feels relieved to see the more normal looking side of him, something she hasn't seen in ages, and it's almost as if she's having a conversation with an ordinary person. She does her best to remind herself that, even with his lack of makeup, this is not the case.

"So," He breaths happily, "I think we need to clarify some things."

Martha holds her breath as he leans in close, sizing her up. The Joker waits patiently for the enviable barrage of questions from her; Why am I still here? Why didn't you let me go? Are you going to kill me? Do you want to kill me? Do you want to have me? Right here, right now, on the couch in the wine cellar? Yes, yes I do, Martha . . . But the questions never come. He goes ahead as planned.

"Our relationship, and let's face it, we have one – Our relationship has changed. Let's not try and overanalyze, figure out the _hows_ or _whys_. No need for specifics." He says, waving his hand lackadaisically. "But the fact of the matter is, we did some things, Martha. And I've been thinking it over a bit, as I'm sure you have been too, we're both very cerebral creatures aren't we. I've been thinking it over and what we did, well, it wasn't unpleasant."

He smiles, warm, friendly, disturbing.

"Do you grant that?"

"I . . . don't think that's relevant." She says carefully.

"Oh?" Says The Joker, smile gone and sounding resentful. "Explain." He demands, eyes narrowing.

"Well, whether or not it was unpleasant doesn't change the fact that you're still, um, still keeping me here."

"And I'm going to continue keeping you here." He declares indignantly. "Might move you, what with the milk carton and all, but not until I've done Gotham 1st National. That takes precedence even over you, my dear sweet girly-girl."

He takes this opportunity to run his bare fingers lightly across her cheek, the touch sending a chill up her spine and melting her unintentionally under it.  
>"But yes, I'll move you and things should be find once I've done that and everything's settled. Of course, I'll always visit, and you'll still get the same <em>entertaining<em> treatment as you've gotten here."

She nods, uneasy.

"My point is, we should try and, you know, figure things out. Rules and regulations and all that." She suggests meekly.

He glares sharply and she quickly continues, saying "Nothing planned. Nothing planned, just maybe, if we were a bit more organized about it, there wouldn't be so much confusion. You're a fan of organization. You've told me so several times."

He whistles a tune while he contemplates. At last; "No contracts. Nothing written out, I don't have time for that. I'm a busy man."

"Understood." She tries to smile and finds it arduous. "I think a verbal contract should do just fine. Besides, I'm not . . . not entirely opposed to the idea of staying here. With you."

This last remark is somewhat forced. It resounds in her head and she grasps how true a statement it is, even though she's desperate to escape. His dark eyes hold her, causing her lips to part ever so slightly with want, and it registers that she's desperate for a lot of things.

"Is that so?" Says The Joker, smugly perking an eyebrow.

"Think about it. I'm totally safe here."

She backtracks a moment, decides to rephrase.

"What I mean is, you protect me. I like that. It's a nice feeling, to feel protected. To not to have to worry about everything. No job or bills to get me down. No family or friends to, um, annoy me. And I'll bet I have a very slim chance of catching the flu down here, or anything else for that matter. And even if I did, I'm sure you'd –"

Before she can complete this last bit he's on her, holding a steak knife to her nose and pinning her back against the couch, straddling her with his lean bulk.

"Okay, so who are you and what have you done with the real Martha Aiken?"

"Sh-She's here." Squeaks Martha, utterly panicked.

It might be possible that she's strong enough to push him away. Her exercise regiment has not changed, but she remains still, paralyzed with fear.

"She's here. She's me!"

"Are you _sure_?"

She nods enthusiastically and the knife scrapes her nose.

"Are you absolutely certain? Your personality hasn't fractured in to a million tiny little pieces of severe psychosis, now, has it?"

"N-No. No, it hasn't. I can assure you that it hasn't."

"Oh." And just like that he's off of her and back sitting calmly on the table, knife snugly tucked in to the inside pocket of his vest. "Well, that's good."

She does her best to relax. It's a struggle.

"I-I figured that this set up, the one we have now, is a good foundation to build on. I mean the feeding and the clothes all are fine, and I have no quarrel with the environment. I'm used to it now, so there's no need to change it."

"I hate redecorating."

"So do I. But, to be perfectly frank, I'd like to know if my role in your, erm, in your family is going to be one of the kept pet, or the secret . . . uh . . . the secret mistress."

The Joker shuts his eyes and reflects. "Little of both. How's that sound?"

"So you're going to, um, use me?"

His eyes snap open and his posture becomes rigid.

"I just want to know. We have to be organized, remember? Maybe we should build up a schedule."

He leans in close and in a sinfully seductive tone whispers "I don't know, I prefer a bit of _spontaneity_."

Nodding, she replies "As do I, but we could do it this way; something weekly, for the purposes of stress eradication, and one or two spontaneous scenarios a month, to keep things interesting."

"You know, I could always force you. Have you ever been forced, Martha?"

"No."

"Does it sound like something you might enjoy?" He inquires, smirking devilishly.

"Does it look like something I would let you do?"

"You'd reject me, Martha?"

"I would try and rip it off, Mr. Joker." She counters with a face of stone. "I doubt my attempt would be successful. Still, I would try."

He chuckles.

"There's a bit of fight in you. I like that. When does this little schedule of ours start?"

"Whenever you like. You're the boss of this. You're in control."

"Super!" he laughs, practically giddy.

"However," She warns, "While I'm willing to do whatever you want, and have you do whatever you want to me in the consensual sense, in payment I want at least one trip outside every two weeks. One trip outside whenever I ask for it. That means you have to drop everything because I'm the number one priority. I think that's fair. You can choose the location, of course."

The Joker undoes his belt and holds it in front of her, "Oh sure, but I'll have to have you on a leash."

"Don't you trust me?"

"What can I say? I'm a paranoid guy."

"How about string?" She leans across and touches her hand gently to his scarf, still wrapped loosely around his neck from the walk before. She moves her fingers across his chest, down his arm, and to his hand, then back to her own.

"String." He repeats hoarsely.

"From my wrist to yours? Like in Little Red Riding Hood."

"You forget," Reminds The Joker, elated by the contact of her hand, "She ties it to a tree to trick the wolf."

"The wolf didn't carry a semi-automatic. I won't run because I know you'll be armed. Sound fair?"

With pursed lips he bows his head, once, for confirmation and takes her hand to shake.

"We have a deal."

He gets up to leave and as he reaches the door he turns around to remark "I've always liked your cooperative spirit, Martha Aiken. So many people aren't that willing to work with me the way you are."

"I look forward to your next visit, Mister Joker." She replies, and after a moment adds "What's your name?"

"You've got it in your hand. It's in that deck of cards, remember."

"No, I mean your real name."

He resembles a confused child, and she finds it touching.

"What would you have me call out? You know, in-between _oh god_ and _yes, harder_." She asks, mimicking the wailing moans of a woman in the throws of passion. This sudden, acted example brings a moderate twinge of red to his cheeks, and both he and Martha are surprised by this.

"I don't know. Think one up for me." He suggests dejectedly before throwing the key on the floor and slamming the door behind him.


	11. Seduction

CHAPTER 11: _SEDUCTION_

After checking the innards of the pack, along with each separate card, for hidden messages (fortunately, this time around there are none) she spends the rest of the week playing solitaire and thinking.

She keeps coming back to that impromptu performance of hers, her improvised cries of excitement and how they made him – _him_ – The Joker, blush. She feels their little meeting was a great success, and that not only has it gained her more time to work with, but also his trust, and the fact that they are both back on affable terms with one another certainly can't hurt her chances of escape, or so she likes to think.

During the start of the seventh game, as she's setting up the card, everything comes together, like a row of doors opening all at once to reveal something that has before gone totally unseen. She stops dead in her activities, letting the cards slip lightly out of her fingers. It is as though she is given a vantage point from a great distance away, far past her own experience, and all at once she understands what needs to be done. It's funny, how the cards will factor into it. It's almost as if he's trying to help her get out.

She concludes that she will seduce The Joker.

And when the time is right, she will draw the gun and take him for her shield (my how the tables have turned), ascend the staircase, and walk out the front door. She is invigorated by this grandiose proposal, but she is also slightly frightened by it.

The variables present themselves accordingly.

Even if his men don't let her leave, even if they (or he) shoots her dead, she'll have left a lasting impression, something to be proud of. That, and she figures he'll immediately regret her death, and probably miss her once she's gone. She snorts; not too likely, but a fun thought nevertheless.

And then there's the other scenario.

Supposing he decides to blow the wine cellar before they can strut casually out of the delicatessen? At the very least she knows he'll die too, and won't that be a happy little coincidence.

In-between rounds of the game she practices her lines, works on her movements. She knows she has to make it look natural, unpracticed. If it isn't, he'll know.

She hasn't got much to go on beyond the romantic films she's seen and the various books she's read. But then again, she also knows that most men don't need much enticement to feel aroused. Albeit, The Joker is not most men.

Still, she spends a great amount of time on the art of attraction, honing her posture, her movements, and making a mental list of various seductive techniques she thinks may come in handy when the moment arrives. A soft lick of the lips, a slow uncrossing of her legs, prolonged eye-contact with mouth partially parted. She wonders if he'll prefer her as the meek and powerless type, or if he expects her to take control. She finds it is very difficult to master both at once, and at first she feels ridiculous even trying. Eventually, she becomes less self-aware, learning to focus on her imaginary projection of The Joker rather than her own feeble attempts and beguilement.

Eventually the day comes when she feels ready enough to try her little act out on one of the men that feeds her. When he enters she is on the couch, dressed in a simple sweater and nothing more (although her lower-half is well enough hid). She is splayed out across the cushions in the traditional Venus pose, and the man is hit with her innocent-yet-flirtatious look as soon as he steps into the cellar. She initiates small-talk, making sure to use deep, soothing tones and a small smile. She thanks him for the food he's brought, asks after him, about his name, about what he does, adding inconspicuous amounts of innuendo wherever she can. It goes surprisingly well, even despite several verbal fumbles on his part.

In the end the goon is left visibly fighting with his inner urges before at last half-dashing out of the room.

Good, she thinks, but still nowhere near perfect. She continues to practice, confident that the goons she's come-on to won't dare risk telling their boss, for fear of immediate execution via that first man she claimed to have come at her. She becomes an actress in her own way, adding these bazaar rehearsals to her exercise routine, and soon feels confident that she could catch the appeal of any man with her eyes alone – even in spite of her disheveled, slightly malnourished appearance and second-hand wardrobe.

At night she still dreams about him, but now the dreams are varied. The majority of them are still very sexual, with a smaller, lessening percentage continuously dedicated to his nightmarish side, but soon she starts to remember her old life. She dreams about everyday things – grocery shopping, paying bills, watching television, going to work. She figures she'll probably take up smoking if she ever gets out. Something to do with her hands. She imagines the sunlight on her face and sees it when she sleeps, and while it is fleeting, it shines down as one, weakly defined ray of hope.

Escape is imminent.

It's late evening when Martha Aiken asks for The Joker to grace her with his presence one last time. She can only hope she won't incur his wrath by calling for him now, and feels relieved when he wastes no time in coming.

He arrives at her room only slightly anxious, but as he opens it he feigns calm in order to put himself at ease and catch her off her guard. When he finds her standing in the center of the cellar clad in the same satin gown from their dinner date (simply stunning) he inhales sharply at the unexpected attractiveness, memories of their dinner date flooding into his mind and the air catching in his throat.

In the dull quiet of the wine cellar they both hear him take his next breath.

His eyes scan over her, trailing down the nape of her neck to her exposed cleavage. The dress fits her so well, and he regrets omitting mentioning it aloud when she had originally worn it those many weeks ago. He had pinched his own attire for that evening on a whim, plucked off the hanger because it was the easiest and nearest thing to grab. For her, though, he had put a little more though into it. He sees it again now and is glad he did. It's like seeing it for the first time – a narrowly but deeply delicate thing, much like herself, with everything in place to the utmost perfection, and as unaccustomed as she is to this level of dress she seems to sway easily in it.

"You're very beautiful." He hears himself say. He tries not to question it, hoping she's done it for some other reason than to try and peak his already heightened interest.

Her face remains still; "Looks are accidental, Mr. Joker."

"Sometimes they're self imposed, Miss Aiken – Martha." And he grins, licking at the edges of his scars. "What's the occasion?"

"Boredom." She replies.

"You decided to play dress up?"

A flash of him, making her perform his makeup ritual. He wishes he'd brought the face-paint with him, wondering what the combination of the dress and mask might bring out in her.

"Why not." Martha holds up the bicycle deck he gave her and says "Play with me?"

He raises an eyebrow, intrigued. She goes to the couch, sits, and waits for him to follow suit.

_So_, he thinks happily as he sits down beside her, _the dance has begun._

She shuffles the deck, fingers quick and light. He has no idea where this is going, and it occurs to him in this moment that with all his knowledge and intrusion, he could never entirely predict her, or own her at all. He could water the seed, he could sing to the bud; what blossomed followed its own nature and was beyond him.

"I took the jokers out." She remarks coolly.

"I'm a bit busy for games." He doesn't mean it, but he feels it deserves stating nonetheless. Almost everything to do with Gotham 1st National has been taken care of, save for the actual heist, and that would occur in two days' time.

"Liar."

"Fine." He snaps and reaches for the deck, but she quickly pulls away. He grumbles to himself, and she doesn't look at him.

"You don't have to play. You can keep me in here to entertain myself, I'm accustomed to it. I guessed you might need a time-out from your business is all. Like we talked about? A break from the stress."

A fractional turn of his head is enough to dash his annoyance like a vase thrown against pavement.

"What games do you know?"

"Besides solitaire? Just the one."

A beat.

"Bullshit."

"Excuse me?" He hisses.

"Bullshit – it's a game about lying. You'll probably win."

She hands him a total of seven cards, keeps seven for herself, and places the rest of the deck on the coffee table in front of them.

"The rules are simple. You tell me something, and if I think it's true and it is, you discard a card. If I think you're lying, and you are, you pick up a card."

"What if I'm not lying, but you think I am?"

She smiles, pretty, devious, like him, and for a split second he is lost in self-congratulation at his own manipulative cunning.

"If I think you're lying and you insist you aren't, I pick up a card. Understand?"

"How will you tell if I'm lying?" He really is quite curious.

"I'll rely on my instincts. It works both ways, of course. We don't have to play Bullshit. It isn't vital. We can go right into _other things_. I just figured, since I'm going to be staying here a while –" She dismisses this apathetic mentioning of their reality in a loose and uncaring way, "Well, it seemed like the right game to play. I'd like to get to know you. Properly. I am your pet, after all. Your mistress."

There is a sultry touch to her voice when she says this last word, something undeniably alluring.

"Oh, and nothing boring." She adds, eyes flashing a come-hither look. "This game is for excitement, so whatever you tell me, whatever I tell you, we have to make it pop."

He nods, and without another word the game gets underway.

The elephant in the room is a big one, but strangely both players are able to cope. If the heat between them, the tension and attraction, were some tangible thing it might be an electric wave generating around them, containing them in a beautiful, anomalous way. Both ignore it, focusing only on what the other is saying. Each meticulous body movement, a slight toss of the hair, a twitch and a lick, a lingering of a hand on the knee or a stolen glance, is overlooked by the individual player in order to attend to the here and now, the game at hand. Much effort goes into this, and a secondary game emerges, one of temptation and self-denial that is too subtle for either of them to immediately pick up on at first.

"I'll start." Says Martha.

The Joker holds up a hand to interject; "May I propose something?" She nods. "If you're intent on playing this little game of yours, I recommend viewing yourself from a distance for a while. If you like, I'll do the same."

She eyes him suspiciously.

"What do you mean?"

"It's simple. If comments are made, and you find them - ah, how shall I put it . . . _unpleasant?_ Well, better to see them in context. It should give you a kick."

She ponders this. "The things you say aren't always droll. Most of the jokes you make aren't funny, either. At least not to me."

"Oh, I don't know. I think I'm growing on you, Martha." He replies, voice low and treacherous.

"I'll laugh when I think it deserves laughing, but I refuse to force it tonight. I've stopped caring." And with that she looks him strait in the eyes, taking nothing back.

His grin widens. "Good for you! The first step to enlightenment is to stop caring! Also, no coward business. I'll never let you live it down, Martha. I suspect we'll both say things that are painfully true, and hear things that are delightfully _twisted_, but we should both agree to see these remarks as the simple passing of truth. Nothing to get offended over or upset about, right?"

"You want to keep things light."

"It beats being serious all the time."

"Okay. It's a deal, and _you_ can go first."

He leans back and puts his feet up in an effort to better relax. This is turning out to be an interesting night.

"I once owned a dog. Perth was his name, after this town in West Australia. He was a mutt, no real defining breed in him. Just a big sloppy mess of genetics. Sort of like Jackson Pollock made a dog instead of a painting. Nice animal, plain but pretty, like you. Annoyed the hell out of me most times, but on occasion I found I enjoyed his company."

He pauses, and then, smirking – "When I was twelve I took a hatchet to his head."

"Leave it to you to start the game off with honesty." She says, motioning for him to discard one of his cards.

With a whoop of a laugh, "I lied." And he hands her a card. "His name wasn't Perth. It was Heath, and I ran him over with a car. On purpose, of course." He adds happily, fidgeting slightly in his excitement.

Martha picks up a card and proclaims "I lost my virginity when I was eighteen. His name was Dennis Ford, and he was my next door neighbor."

"False!" Cries The Joker, pointing firmly toward the ceiling. "I've been lied to and I demand justice!"

She sighs and picks up another card.

"Your turn."

"Aw, but what about the real story?" He pouts playfully. "I told you about Heath, didn't I?"

"It's not in the rules to have to –"

"Do I look like I care!" He roars, suddenly vicious.

"His name was David," She explains, unruffled. "I was nineteen, we were drunk. He never called me back."

"And what was it that you did together, again?"

"We fucked."

"Don't say it that way, please." His anger is small, fleeting, enough for the request to sound more like a warning. "Profanity does not become you."

"Fine. We made love, I guess."

"How?"

"You mean the position? Or the environment."

"Either or." He chirps.

"Standard position, in a car. Nothing particularly fantastic about it."

"Did you climax?"

Eyes wide, she nods slowly, deliberately looking at him.

"I've killed over fifty men." He remarks flippantly, avoiding her gaze.

"Bullshit."

"Correct. It's well over a hundred by now." He scoffs with a wink before picking up a card.

"I have a phobia."

"Let me guess. Clowns?"

"Lightning." She confesses despondently. "You never know when or where it's going to strike. I guess, metaphorically, lighting describes this situation too."

"Well you ought to be over your phobia then." He asserts, taking a card. "I'm twenty eight, by the way."

She peers hard at him for a minute or two, searching, doing her best to try and examine his face through the concealing makeup and the disfiguring scars. Through it all, she manages to see the youthfulness.

"God," She gasps, "You really are."

His smile is one of crafty arrogance. "Your turn."

"I liked it." She begins. "When we kissed. It turned me on."

He does his best to keep himself from derailing.

"I'm not surprised. I'm a pretty amazing human being." He shrugs then, handing her a card.

"It's the truth." And with that she takes the card and puts it at the base of the pile, smiling slyly.

"And how do we feel about this newly exposed truth, darling dearest?" He sneers.

"Well, either it's Stockholm syndrome, or you really are an amazing human being. I think I've been here long enough to accept either as a viable explanation."

"You sound like a shrink." He mutters.

"Is that a good thing?"

"No." Growls The Joker. "I _hate_ shrinks. I hate all psychiatrists. They disgust me."

"I'll wager that's true. Why?"

"Why not? It's the insane trying to cure the insane. It's disturbing enough, funny enough and I'd love if it if it weren't so awfully depressing." Here he hangs his head, all sorrow and sadness like some moping child. She goes to put a hand on his shoulder and he lurches away, smiling again and laughing at her surprise.

"What is it about me, hmm? What's the bate on the hook that caught you?" Inquires The Joker, sounding mischievous.

"Chloroform."

"Be honest." He cautions, simpering. "What did it for you?"

"Is that really important right now?"

"I need a self esteem boost." He fibs.

"I'll tell you if you tell me now whether or not it was intentional."

"What's that?"

"This. Us. Was it intentional, or was it an accident?"

"You oughta know, you made the first move." He replies, guileful, adding as an afterthought "I suppose I'd call it more of a coincidence. You know – serendipity."

"But it wasn't planned, was it."

"Martha, you know better."

"I didn't think so. I'd ask you why me, but I guess I don't really need to know. And for your information, I can't exactly say what it is about you that gets me going."

"Try." He whispers.

"I suppose it's a combination of things." She begins. "I think you're ugly. Thought you were ugly. Now, I don't know. Would you believe me if I told you I used to hate looking at your scars, and your eyes even more so. But now, it's all I can do to keep from looking, and I don't mean that in the impolite way either."

"So in other words, if I looked like every other pretty boy in Gotham you wouldn't give me the time of day. I'm touched, but honestly, Martha. What about my sparkling personality? I've gone out of my way to show it to you." He beams with a twitch and a lick.

Her face remains devoid of emotion.

"You took my control away. You stole the wheel as I was driving. Part of me wanted to kill you, and the other part wanted you to keep on driving. But now that everything's been settled, well, I find that it's nice in the passenger's seat. No responsibility, nothing to worry about, no purpose to my life either."

He reflects on her words.

Has he really stolen her purpose? He has usurped it, definitely, but he had fully intended to give her back her dreary, uneventful little life after all had been said and done. Her continued captivity was all her own doing. Even if he had caused her to want him, she was the one who had acted on those feelings. He had abstained, so why hadn't she? She had proposed the terms and conditions, she had wanted to make it organized. He catches himself leering at her, something between a cross glare and a hopeless gaze, and discerns the fact that, if she were to leave right here and now, he would be overcome with a crippling wave of loneliness.

"It's your go." She reminds him.

Several rounds later and he has two cards left, and Martha is struggling to juggle nearly the entire deck. She's partially given up on winning, resting some of them on the small patch of cushion between herself and The Joker. She's noticed him becoming more content, more at ease. All according to plan. She tries to act as casual as she can, for her own good _it can not look rehearsed_.

She scoots a bit closer to him. "I laugh at funerals. I don't know why. I think it's how nervous I get. I can't help it."

"Yes, well, they can be pretty fun. At least the ones I cause anyway." Declares The Joker, handing her yet another card. "You're bad at this, Martha."

"Am I?" She retorts with blithe. "Oh well. I told you that you were likely to win."

She licks her lips to moisten them, and he finds their shine intensely moving.

"And what do I get if I win?"

Martha Aiken turns to face him directly and in a perfectly clean tone of voice asks "What do you want?"

In a rare stray from character, he pounces on her. She is just as taken aback by him as he is with himself. He holds himself against her, pushing her down onto the couch with hardly any effort, body on autopilot and blissfully unaware of his indignant mind's outraged cries of protest. The cards fall off the couch, out of her hands. He doesn't care. For weeks he hasn't moved, on her or his plan, and the unease of his men came to his ears in gossipy whispers whenever he ventured out of his room for dinner. Why was she still here? Why did he never go to talk with her anymore? Why has the jester locked up such a strange queen in the dungeon? The crowd had grown restless. But he had seen to them after his walk, and he had seen to her after seeing to his men, and now, locked in this tight embrace with Martha Aiken, behind closed doors, he chooses to ignore it all and see to himself – to give in to his primal hunger.

Managing to hold most of the animistic lust at bay, despite the fact she is practically begging for it, he hoarsely asks her "What's my name? I told you to give me one."

Her tongue is not an unwelcome visitor in his mouth, and he can feel himself growing ready, just as she can.

Finally, he manages to pull away, gasping for air. He continues to hold her while maintaining a kind of distance.

"Well?"

"Jack." She whines.

"Jack who?"

"Just Jack. The Jack who become a Joker."

His cheeks are burning and he's sure she can see the red, even under the makeup.

"I want you." He snarls, trying desperately not to look at her. It's the most honest he's ever been with her and he can't decide whether or not he likes it.

She silently hands him a card, the last one she has, reminding him of their little game that's apparently still in motion.

"I'm not lying."

"I know." She breathes.

He looks at the card and sees that it's a joker. He gapes, grins, and the manic laughter starts. Such sweet, addictive madness. Then he's back on top of her, pressing her into the couch, stroking her hair gently with the one hand and savagely parting her legs with the other. His gray sweater is discarded, as is his black vest, and the top four buttons of his deep purple dress-shirt are undone shortly thereafter, loosened and failing to cover his smooth, youthful chest no thanks to Martha's nimble digits. The heat he feels is incredible, close to the completeness he gains whenever he destroys some giant chunk of the world around him with dynamite. Desperation overtakes him and he's groaning in to her, all bliss and heaven and God's trumpets playing to his brisk, almost clumsy movements. He lets all self consciousness go as his lips trail up her cheek in an arc, tongue peeking out to lick her ear seductively, and trailing down her neck to find her collarbone.

He puts all of his mental and physical effort into exploring this woman to the best of his ability, taking note of every curve and crevasse, making sure not to exclude a single feature, no matter how seemingly inaccessible, and striving only for personal satisfaction.

Meanwhile, her hands are working on pulling his shirt, currently down around his forearms, off of him altogether. This small feat is accomplished in no time flat, and soon his hands have found the zipper at her back. Eventually they become entangled, both bare chested with The Joker urgently trying to unbutton his trousers and Martha's beautiful gown scrunched down around her waist, just above her hips. His white makeup is almost gone thanks to a combination of sweat, and his rapid kisses smearing it across her chest and down her stomach.

He rears back up and yanks her dress off past her ankles, tossing it effortlessly across the room, eyes always on her. He is ecstatic to see that no more time and energy will have to go into disrobing her, because, to his excited surprise, the dress was the only garment she had on.

He pauses a moment, taking in the sight of her. She is flushed as well, and something about seeing the remnants of his makeup streaked and smudged across her fragile torso sends him over the edge.

He drops back down on to her, hungry lips finding hers instantly. The feel of her skin on his is fantastic, warm, soft, smooth, and he moans openly as she starts to grind under him. While she is not terrifically endowed, there is certainly nothing disagreeable about her breasts. He kneads and tugs at them, pulling keenly at each nipple and chuckling in to her mouth when he manages to earn a sharp whimper of pain from her. She makes a move to caress his scars, gently massaging them from the corners of his mouth and back again, and he lets her, savoring the feel of such unusually specific attention.

The problem of his trousers still being on is accentuated by the hardness of his length. Pulling himself away from one another, they both take a second from their exploration to help remove them, and just like that both bodies are devoid of clothing and pleasantly entwined on the couch.

They kiss for a while, neither keeping track of the time. As he lays atop her he can feel the warmth pooling at her crotch, and he yearns to taste her. She wiggles under him and he tenses, on fire, and she smiles and the reaction, pulling his head back down into hers. He continues to inspect her midriff, at first with his hands, and eventually parting from her mouth and coming to her center. Letting his tongue slide furtively over it, he tastes her anew and finds it positively delicious. She cranes her head back, mouth agape as she moans the name Jack over and over. He licks each fold with a certain amount of loving attentiveness until he's sure she's as close to the edge as he wants her to be. Then his lips are back on hers and she can taste herself swirling in-between their connected mouths, sweet like honey.

He breaks away for air and she is given another chance for observation. She stares at his member, impossibly large, and her entire body shivers as his eyes lock with hers. He starts to manipulate himself. With his left hand he caresses his now-exposed, half-hard cock with steady, smooth strokes while his right hand rests just beside her head for balance. Small beads of sweat collect on his brow and sprinkle down from above as she watches his face, expression twisted into one of pleasurable agony. The action of his self-gratification is hypnotizing in it's own rite, and Martha gazes with awe-struck wonder as the first drops of precum begin to accumulate on his head.

Unabashed, she takes him firmly in her hand, pointing the glistening head of his flushed organ toward the space between her legs, and guiding him to her entrance. At first he is too dumbstruck to react, her fingers on him – like that oh god she's touching me there _like that_ – but she gives a quick, firm stroke and to her delight his body quakes at her touch, and right away he is back on track.

In the small space of time before the initial penetration, as he positions himself over her, his cock hard in her shaking hand, she has a moment to contemplate what is about to occur.

Martha comes to the conclusion that this man she is coaxing into coitus is not Jack. And while giving him that name provides her with a certain amount of evasion, a last thin shield that allows her to pretend this is a different scenario altogether and turn a blind eye to what's actually happening, she can no longer ignore the fact that she's about to be fucked by The Joker. She should grab the book, take the gun out, _now_, while he's at his most vulnerable. She doubts he would call the men in to see him like this, bare bodied and in mid-concupiscence with a gun pointed at his stomach.

She could get out now, she should try.

A tiny alarm sounds in her head, but before she has time to stop what's happening, to react appropriately, he is pinching impatiently at her thigh. Pressing his tip against her, he slowly pushes until he's inside. She tenses at the intrusion, and he quirks an eyebrow at her, enjoying the distress in her face. She grits her teeth and bears through the resistance, making sure to keep her eyes on him as he pumps away at her. A sizzling thrill shoots through her body with each repetitive, sliding movement, and it does not take long for her to loosen up. Still, she thinks about the book, but as his pace increases her thoughts begin to muddle. Finally, the sensation becomes too great, the want too monumental, and before she can put a halt to her own wild behavior she's constricting her legs around his hips, pushing him deeper into her. For a moment he just hovers above her, breathing ragged and eyes vast. She gives him a single, curt nod, and he proceeds, driving into her with a series of enjoyably violent thrusts. She attempts to match his momentum by rolling her hips into each thrust, happily listening to the hushed and needy noises pouring from him, but after a time she looses the race and lets him have at her in the way he likes best.

The sex is fast and sloppy and absolutely phenomenal – something brimming with passion and lust, and perhaps just a taste of actual intimacy. To her it's incomparable, like nothing she's ever experienced, although those past instances had the unfortunate luck of being disappointingly forgettable. Nevertheless, he seems to handle her with some kind of underlying knowledge that leaves her positively bewildered.

Buried within her, he stops abruptly for the second time, leaning in to suck playfully at her nipple.

"Don't – Don't stop." She begs, "Keep going. Keep going."

He does, smiling proudly as he shoves back in with a single, fluid motion that makes her gasp. His breathing gets heavier, and the slightest hint of a moan accompanies the edge of each breath. As his tempo builds the sharp, wet sound of his continuous pumping shatters the silence of the tiny wine cellar. Somewhere in the back of his head The Joker concedes that fucking Martha Aiken feels indescribable – her tight, wet flexing pulling him inward with each taken plunge is a bliss far grander than any amount of gunpowder or gasoline could ever provide.

With her legs clenched around his hips, thrusting against his cock, she whines urgently, and he slams against her, back arching at the unexpected force of him. They both hit their peak early on, each with a different reaction. From Martha comes a long, drawn-out, wordless chorus for which there is only the accompaniment of The Joker's fierce, guttural growling. She is left winded, whereas his recovery is impossibly quick. Something about the knowledge that he can have her, like this, at any time he wants now, Gotham and the Batman be damned.

The second time is less rough but just as enjoyable. It happens almost instantly after the first, but this time it's slower, more deliberate, a thing to savor. He's out of her not more than three minutes before he's rock hard again and shoving himself back inside. Martha's cries of protest become desperate mewls, peppering each labored inhalation as he starts. She claws at his back, leaving deep, bloody scratch marks that she's sure he'll appreciate come morning.

In the middle he has her flip over so that he can continue to take her from behind. She finds she prefers this position to the last, as it allows him much better access and thus, much more sensation for her. He shows her the upmost amount of tenderness and devotion to her satisfaction.  
>He feels her body tense, hears her breaths growing short and strained. He continues, quickening the pace. Eventually he joins her with his own unrestrained, panting cries. Hearing his low, husky groaning combined with her high pitched quivering sends Martha over the edge. Her second climax for the evening shakes her to the very soul. The Joker slows but is reluctant to stop, riding out the waves of Martha's climax and enjoying that quick, unpredictable tightening she gives him with each diminishing wave.<p>

The third time is a surprise. That glorious crest was lost on The Joker during the second run, and despite her exhaustion, he convinces Martha into haphazardly climbing on top of him, totally upright while he sits on the couch, in order to finish him off. She does her best, with her soreness bringing a new level of unforeseen pleasure as she bounces gingerly on top of him.

She stops halfway to ask "Why the Batman?"

At first he is speechless, and it is everything he can do to stop himself from pushing her to the floor and having her that way.

Attempting to be as respectful-sounding as he can, he manages to choke "Could I please just finish?"

"No." She teases, raising herself up and shoving herself back down hard. He gasps, eyelids halfway closed, and she tells him that she absolutely needs to know. "Now."

This inquiry has him stumped, and impatiently so. What could he possibly say about the Batman?

"Fine." He pants, trying to rock under her. "Just keep going."

Martha continues to slide herself up and down, riding him in a way she can tell he enjoys. She can't help but smile as he struggles to concentrate on his answer.

He tells her that he has always been 'mad' (not really mad, just ahead of the curve), but up until the Batman came into the picture, he had been nothing but a mad dog. Useless, without purpose, barking for no good reason. But afterward, after the Batman flew into town, he became a man on a mission.

He pauses here and there to kiss her, to yank her down to his mouth and nip at one of her nipples.

Pulling away, she says "Go on."

He strains to regain his train of thought – tells her that he saw somebody on one end of the spectrum and said to himself, well, if this freak can do it so ridiculously and get credit, up the stakes for heroes, well maybe I should adopt the habit as well and up the stakes for the criminals. Hell, I alone could create a better category, a better _class_ of criminal. Something for men to shoot for. I could inspire if I so chose! And doesn't that just bring us back to our little motto regarding the mathematics of chaos? If you have one extreme on one end of the spectrum enter the picture, it is only inevitable that the other extreme, the opposing end of the spectrum, will enter the picture as well. And so, a friction between the two opposing forces must ensue.

"Speaking of friction –" She coos as she bucks on top of him, suspending herself at his head and twitching her hips several times before easing back down.

His response is nothing more than a deep hiss.

At the time he first met the Batman he was simply a lean thug trying to make a living by using his 'gifts', hiring them out to mob men and the like. He tells her that he worked briefly as a freelance assassin. It meant receiving ends-meat for doing what he loved, being artistically violent for pay. But the day came when he lost the inspiration for it, to the point where his self-esteem had plummeted to a dangerous level (he had even contemplated suicide at one point during this brief creative slump). And then came the Batman, flying into the picture on a zip-line, and The Joker knew right then and there that he was either going to have to evolve or be lost to the winds of change—

"As cliché as that sounds." He murmurs in-between shuddering gasps. For such a mousy little thing, Martha Aiken, he decides, is one hell of a lover.

Speaking of Martha, she can feel the sensation building, getting steeper. It's getting very difficult to listen to what he's saying and she does her best to focus.

Well, change he did, although at first it was only a minor change. He started doing things just for the hell of it. Beforehand, his mischief had always been a byproduct of some well-organized captor, something where the focus had always been dollar signs. Now he was embracing the chaos—not worrying about 'planned' heists and the like, but going with the flow, having fun with it all, like he used to do (as a kid, although he purposely leaves this bit out, remembering that Martha had heard the sob story about the chemicals factory and the men who cut his face). The Joker tells Martha that he created all manor of chaos, and would continue to do so until Gotham City came to know him.

"And why shouldn't they?" He reels, rocking in to her. "Just when they thought it was safe to go back out at night, here I come, bringing a new rein of insanity into their lives."

That's all The Joker really ever wanted. Just to meet him, to inspect and study the specimen that is the Batman—to test him like he would test the rest of humanity, in the ways he himself had been tested. To see how low the Batman could sink, if he was really as much of a diamond in the rough as The Joker figured he might be.

"Almost." Is all The Joker says before shoving up hard, one last time.

He watches with pride as her body goes rigid and then slouches against his, totally spent. Arms hold her closely as he does the same, straining as he empties himself into her warmth.

"That . . ." He sighs, sleepy and content once the last pulses of pleasure have receded, "That was fun."

Martha goes to give a cold retort, but finds she can't quite put the effort into it. It's almost like he's undeserving.

They stay together for a time, lounging, appeased in their mutual want for flesh. Martha rests her head on the crook of his neck, staring off into space and trying to battle back the reality of what she knows must come next. The Joker, meanwhile, listens intently to her breathing, focusing on the rise and fall of her back. He moves a hand up to rest between her shoulder blades, and can just about feel her heartbeat through her ribs. The contact leaves him feeling strange, some bazaar combination of disgust and tenderness, of fondness and aversion. He is unsure whether the distaste is meant for himself or fir her.

He considers saying something but what is there to say? He could tell her something he thinks she'd want to hear, something romantic or perhaps something poetic. In the end he decides against it. Even if he meant what he was saying, she wouldn't believe him. This thing that they had done together, the fucking or love-making or copulation – whatever it was that society or psychiatrists might want to label it after the fact – it had been her chore, not her choice. She had done it because of their agreement, not because she had wanted to. In this moment of bittersweet realization he both adores and hates Martha Aiken, and for the first time in his life, he yearns to be normal.

To be Jack.

The desire is fleeting.

She feels his hands squeeze her backside and go completely slack.

"Off." He barks, and she slides away, aiming for the furthest cushion of the couch.

He looks down at himself, at where she had been straddling him. He sighs and ponders what could have been, had he been a good, law-abiding, sane-headed man, and she a woman who liked him for himself, liked him because it was him rather than because she feared for her life.


	12. Monstrous

CHAPTER 12: _MONSTROUS_

In the tiny, dirty space of the wine cellar, The Joker sits on the couch, totally naked, the taste of Martha still on his tongue. He would have had her again if it weren't for the onset of exhaustion.

He shuts his eyes, worn out. Opening them a second or two later he sees Martha Aiken, alert and almost muscular in her pose on the cushion beside him, holding a gun and aiming it precisely at his face. With the addition of the weapon, she looks ravishing.

The gears in his head come to a screeching standstill, and for a moment The Joker can not think.

He should be outraged. Ordinarily, any joke played at his expense would send him overboard with homicidal thoughts, but in this case, all he can see is the funny side. Well played, Martha Aiken. Well played. He has to admit, he admires her bravery. He looks at the gun and can't help but laugh.

"Do you even know how to use one of those?"

He goes to poke the barrel and she cocks the hammer, pointing it directly at his nose.

"Any moron can shoot a pistol, Mr. Joker." She remarks smoothly, "The question you ought to be asking is, can I aim?"

He is both shocked and impressed by this snarky response. He grins, nods, and shuts up. She allows him to put his trousers back on, not wishing to cause too much embarrassment to the man who has just given her what she surmises was probably the best sexual experience of her life. Without prior command, he casually tosses her his shirt (apparently with the same courtesy in mind), and she puts it on one-handed, making sure to keep the gun on him at all times. The shirt is short, but baggy enough to cover her adequately. He has to confess, he likes seeing her wear it, something about an item of his on her touches him in a selfish, sweet sort of way.

She rounds him and pushes the barrel between his shoulder blades.

"Wow, was I really _that bad_, Martha?" He jokes.

"You and I are going to walk out of here, _Jack_. We're going to march right out of here to the nearest car, and then we're going to drive. You're going to take me to the outskirts of Gotham, and then you're going to _let me go_. If you don't, I'll blow your fucking head off. Understand?" She whispers, frighteningly tense.

"Oh, terrific! You've lost your mind!" The Joker exclaims gleefully, twitching with excitement. "Good for you."

"I learned from the best."

"You know I can't let you go, Martha."

It's sad, the way he says it. But she feels like she can't trust that solemn touch of sincerity in his voice. He's tricked her so many times before, it's all one big joke to him and she braces herself for the punchline.

"You're a maniac." She whispers angrily, and her words have a severe sting to them.

He twists in her grasp so that he can flash her a garish grin.

"Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage." Explains The Joker. "By that logic, _you're_ the crazy one, Martha."

"You fucking asshole!" She screams, enraged by his lack of fear. "Do you think I want to be doing this? Do you think I want to be threatening death? You turned me in to _you_! I have no choice! You're a fucking monster!"

"Exactly!" He roars, matching her intensity.

Silence.

His grin widens, cracking lips parting to reveal both rows of dirty yellow teeth.

"Exactly." He says again, less hysterical but still clearly unsettled.

She doesn't say a word. Nothing comes to mind that's worth saying now.

"I can quote them for you – all the ones that are supposed to make you feel better. Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results. Einstein. The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four people is suffering from a mental illness. So if your three best friends seem okay, then you're crazy. Rita Mae Brown. The reason I talk to myself is because I'm the only one whose answers I accept. George Carlin. There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I –"

"–erased this line." She finishes, adding "Oscar Levant."

His eyes narrow, and she can't read him any more after that.

"Nobody seems to get it." He begins calmly, "Nobody understands. We're all mad here, Martha. I'm mad, you're mad. We're both just as out there as everybody else, but _I'm_ okay with it. _I'm_ not trying to hide it. In fact –" He points rigidly to his painted skin, grinning so that his scars stretch grotesque. "I go to terrific lengths to put it on display. Obviously."

Her mouth remains tightly closed, she knows better than to speak now.

"Normality is all one big joke." He cackles. "The way they try to hide their natures. It's hilarious. Everybody's just as sick as I am. The only difference is that I'm not afraid to admit it. I accept the madness, and the chaos, and it makes me smile."

For all her remaining sanity, and there is very little left now, she beseeches him, desperate for a credible answer.

"Why?" she pleads. "Why me? Why couldn't you just let me go? What couldn't you just pick somebody else to help you with the bank?"

Giving a mocking pout, The Joker leans back on his heels to test her balance before cooing, "It was never about the bank, Martha. If you think me so simple even now, well, then you never knew me to begin with."

"Why? _Why?_" she implores, moving the gun up and shaking it against his temple in a crazed fashion.

Looking back at her, with a scornful twinge to his tone The Joker eagerly continues "Man is a wolf to man. Others hide the animal within by acting civilized, and while _I_ won't, I can't be too bold or else the others will turn on me. But to openly hunt the flock, what better way to set yourself apart?"

"So you hurt the innocent to prove what?" Martha retches miserably. "That you're different? That you're the same?"

"That when the chips are down these civilized people – they'll eat each other. I'm not a monster, I'm just ahead of the curve." He tenderly clarifies. "It's brilliant, the way it's all been devised. At first they'll all think I'm in it for the money – that I have a singular vision to see the Batman dead and the mob slicing the city up for a profit while the police try and take them down one block at a time. But in the end they'll see – insanity does not exist, because, underneath it all, everybody's crazy. You'll all thank me for it afterward. I promise. Every. Single. One of you. You'll all be laughing your faces off."

She has this instinct that tells her there is some cruel truth to what he's told her, but she refuses to acknowledge it. Hanging her head in defeat, Martha determines that, despite her desperation for logic, she'll receive none of it now, and it is likely that she never will. Aware of this at last, she gives up on asking him any more questions and begins to push him toward the door.

"Come on." She tells him, tone of voice dull, "It's time for my walk."

They approach the door and she fishes the key out from his trouser pocket. Handing it to him she tells him to unlock it. He does so willingly, making sure to go as painfully slow as she'll permit.

"You've thought about this."

"For days." She replies despondently.

"Ummmm . . ." He wriggles under her grip and it tightens, along with her finger on the trigger. "Have you thought of everything, Martha?"

"I've planned it out, if that's what you mean." She winces involuntarily as she says the word 'planned', a reaction forced on her by his hatred of the action. Her abhorrence of him, this miserable confinement, is raw and enlivening in contrast.

Fangs bared, he continues in a tone only slightly less mocking.

"Oh, really? Well, what if I snapped my head back really fast – _like this_."

The rear side of his skull abruptly collides with her forehead, and for a moment her senses are burning and she can't see. Before she can react he has slipped her grip and somehow the gun has come out of her hand, and when she finally regains her vision she is staring point-blank at the barrel, beyond which is his grinning face, incredibly close and obnoxiously smug.

"Advice for the future, Martha." He quips, "If you choose to plan something out, make sure to cover _every_ angle. You never know what might go wrong."

She looks up at him, wide eyes finding his soulless ones and she becomes momentarily lost in the void, feeling suddenly cheap and dirty. She experiences the first pangs of shame at the recognition that she's let him use her. Another attempt failed, and all the hopes of freedom and normalcy are dashed like crystal against a stone hearth. Her eyes dart away and Martha tries to scramble past him, panic blossoming out of self-reproach. The Joker lurches forward with a startling amount of agility and seizes her by the scruff of her hair. Callous fingers cover her wide, wet mouth (still slick with his saliva), and as he holds her to him he muses, "Aw, now what? Did you really think you were gonna walk out of here, just like that?"

His hollow black gaze bores into her, and her cheeks burn with freshly shed tears. Tracing the gun barrel along the soft expanse of her cheeks to catch the dampness before it can leave her face, he chuckles lightly, complacently sadistic. Half of her wishes he would just pull the trigger, and then all of her worrying would be over, but that part of her that fights and flies and prays for survival can't stand to let her think that way.

"I'll admit, I was expecting a double cross from the get-go, ever since I gave you that nifty little bicycle deck." He reveals contemptuously. "But I was really hoping that you weren't lying, Martha. I was really hoping you'd be the genuine article. Man did you have me going." He adds, suppressing a giggle.

"Some funny joke, huh?" She jibes.

Like an animal she bites his shin, and out of reflex he jerks away to put distance between himself and this wild woman he thought he had momentarily subdued. His first reaction to come after leaping back is confusion. Then, a grotesque grin contorting his face in to one of flashing fury, and just like that he's out for blood – all residue of the soft lover who caressed her so compassionately only minutes ago boiled away by hot anger. Flicking the gun against the supple curve of her lips, Martha is knocked on her back with bloody teeth, and before she can fully rise his foot comes across swiftly to meet with her chest. Her breath comes out of her in one, wounded gust and she quickly slumps to the floor, weight taken up by his wiry arms as he helps to place her in to a position of better comfort.

Softly he purrs a verse from Mary Shelly. "I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other."


	13. Actress

I apologize profusely for my absence and lack of writing. Please forgive me, but know that a host of new chapters will be sprouting up shortly, and I've even gone back and updated most of the other chapters. I am even working on a possible sequel, but please read on and enjoy and again I apologize for making you delightful readers wait so long.

. . .

CHAPTER 13: ACTRESS

Comfort finds her in the soft blackness of unconsciousness, and it is eons before the music comes – so quiet at first, but eventually with a pounding volume that increases, rising exponentially until she is drawn upward, forced to swim though what feels like a layer cake of a hundred or more heavy blankets until the sound encircles her and she is awake.

But this is before that.

Before the music everything is calm, and tranquil, and for just a moment time does not exist, in the same sense that it never truly existed for Martha Aiken. Perhaps she is still asleep in her bed, right now, with the Gotham nightly news droning continuously on in the background of her tiny, predictable life. Perhaps The Joker was never real, except in her mind as some phantom-like figment, a cruel combination of monstrosity and tenderness brought to life by her imagination alone.

She senses in some primal way that she is in a car, moving someplace. She can feel the rocking and smell the gasoline but she chooses to disregard this reality and stay in the eye of the hurricane. She envisions herself at it's center, staring off toward the horizon as the storm rages on. She is safe here, still and untouched and happily intent to watch the destruction of the world from a distance. She ignores the crackling pain that spark like bolts of thunder from the wound he left on her lips. The memory of her collapse is vague and fleeting, she is inside enough to avoid it. For now, all thoughts of love and passion and fear and freedom are set aside. Not gone, but left unacknowledged for the time being.

This place is a wasteland, a paradise.

Martha is herself and not herself. She wanders about the past events of the last few months, and it is as though she sees them from beyond herself, like watching some remote movie screen with an actress whose features resemble her own in an uncanny way. She spends her time judging this person, mentally correcting all the mistakes the protagonist of the film is making, finding herself both perplexed and mortified at the artless revelations that occur in-between the carnal acts preformed by the actress, and cursing the plot for having such a sudden, brutal twist. At one point the actress steps off the screen, and addresses Martha. The two speak as though they are strangers.

The doppelgänger says "You can be anywhere. Where do you want to be?"

Martha considers.

"Here." She replies, relatively sure of her answer.

"You can't stay." Reminds the actress, glowingly radiant in her work clothes. Martha recognizes the outfit, finds it funny that another woman might have the same taste in bank attire as herself, but there is no sense of familiarity to follow. Martha can not recognize this well-fed, unworried version of herself.

"Where do you want to be?"

The actress is too foreign a persona. It's as though Martha speaks with an echo of herself now, part of her that once was but no longer is.

Looking down, Martha sighs. "I don't know."

She mulls it over with an intense amount of effort and finds herself in her house, with the actress sitting on her bed beckoning for her to lay down. Martha doesn't, and continues to think. A variety of differing environments appear before her, none of which meet with her entire approval. All of them feel strangely empty, oddly unfulfilling, despite the small twinge of desire to stay proposed by each (her room, for example, is only slightly alluring). Her desk at Gotham 1st National, her childhood home, the meat locker at the delicatessen, The Joker's room, and finally, the wine cellar materialize for her observation. At this last place she finds herself standing in the doorway, looking in on the actress, who occupies the couch – holding Martha's copy of 'A Clockwork Orange' in the one hand and her deck of playing cards in the other.

"Where do you want to be?"

A wave of uneasiness hits Martha with such abrupt force that she nearly cries out. No place suits her and she suits no place, but she loathes no place more so than the wine cellar. Sadly, no place would pain her more to leave.

It comes out in a half-choked whisper, barely audible. "I have to leave."

The actress only smiles. "Where do you _want_ to be?"

"I don't know."

"You do." Insist the actress.

"I don't want to be here." Martha confesses anxiously. "Not here."

"Do you want to escape?"

She starts to nod, shakes her head, puts her hands to her eyes and curls in on herself, defeated. The actress remains silky-voiced, subdued in her actions and seemingly unaffected by Martha's suffering.

"Do you want to stay?"

"I have to leave."

"But do you want to?"

Martha Aiken doesn't know. She has been a prisoner all her life, from her childhood home to her spot behind the teller's desk at the bank, to the couch in the wine cellar. Captivity, she discovers, is all she knows. She looks at the actress, finding such shinning beauty distasteful to her warped sensibility. How can anybody be so genial when sitting in a place so awful?

"You are weak, Martha Aiken."

Martha swallows hard at the insult but says nothing.

"You are weak because you allow yourself to be imprisoned. You are weak because you are afraid, and even though there's a part of you that fights back – it's only just woken up now – even thought that part of you exists, you choose to hide it away."

Martha goes to argue and the words die in her throat.

"The destruction of the universe is inevitable." Says the actress, smiling warmly. "Don't argue. You know it's true."

Martha can hear music now, weirdly detached like it's coming from another world, seeping in from someplace that she once inhabited. She can almost remember it, what that place was.

"What should I do?"

"There's nothing to do but smile." The actress explains, unruffled by the intruding sound.

"Why?"

"Death is unavoidable. You can either frown or smile. I suggest the latter."

Tiny particles of knowledge filter through, few are caught in the mesh.

"But _why_?" Asks Martha. "Why is it unavoidable? Why is it inevitable?"

The actress only smiles. The answer comes form behind – from The Joker, but as Martha whirls around she does not see the scarred, makeup stained face of some insane criminal, but rather the face of a normal, dull-eyed, fair haired young man whose smile is far from repulsive, and whose shape is far from menacing. He stands just behind her with his back to the wall, the corridor is extraordinarily dark, and the shadows cloak him almost entirely. He looks so much like her brother it's unnerving.

"It's inevitable because you will die." Says The Joker, voice terrifically humane. "You perceive the universe through life, therefore it exists. When you cease to exist, it ceases to exist."

The revaluation is almost base in it's simplicity, and she accepts it totally, without objection.

"Where do you want to be, Martha?" Asks The Joker.

The music is growing louder.

"I know where they want me to be." She tells him, and he holds his arms out for a hug. The volume of the music grows steadily, the way the voices through the walls had when Martha first woke up in the meat locker. In the arms of The Joker, Martha says "I know where I'm supposed to be, and not supposed to be. They teach you to find your way out of cage when you find yourself inside of one. They teach you that early on, and maybe they don't need to because it's already inside you from the beginning. The canary flaps and tweets like some outraged woman because it's a bird and that's what birds are supposed to do when you cage them."

"But the truth is that canaries grow accustomed to their cages." Explains the actress, still on the couch, still smiling. The world is fading away, and the music is invading Martha's haven. She remains in The Joker's embrace, warm, safe, and listening to the actress carry on. "The cat can't get them, they don't have to worry about migrating. Their cage is a paradise that cramps them. You're a bird in a cage that you like, but you thought you were supposed to flap. Whether or not you were supposed to is irrelevant. The point is, you broke your cage, Martha."

"I broke my . . . I broke my cage." Repeats Martha, with the last word distorting as her mouth turns down, hot tears welling at the corners of her eyes. She clings to The Joker and, remarkably, he holds her the way a man might hold his wife, touch so gentle and caring that it's partly jarring to her.

The Joker justifies this by revealing that she never asked to be put into one. "You find yourself in these situations, struggle, give up, and accept your captivity. But not anymore."

"I didn't mean to." She wails tiredly. "I don't know where I want to be, but I do. I do know."

"Do you hate yourself, Martha? Do you hate yourself for wanting to be with him?" She hears the actress inquire, perfectly valid in her curiosity as she struggles to compete with the clamorous music.

Martha weeps like a small child, the hollow tap of her bitter tears as they hit his shirt collar drowned out by the blaring sound. She hates herself for wanting to stay, she hates herself for wanting to go – she despises The Joker and she despises herself for having tricked him, for having plotted to use him and for having liked it. She mouths the words 'I'm so sorry' but nothing else is heard now, and the room begins to melt away.

She is coming out of it now.

Martha Aiken is rousing.


	14. Sacrifice

CHAPTER 14: _SACRIFICE  
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The chosen music for the ride; The Rite of Spring. Specifically, the Sacrificial Dance, and the mood is perfectly set for what The Joker has to do. He has the volume cranked past eleven, hoping the jarring bass will move her the way it moves him, even despite the fact she's currently bound and gagged in the trunk. Such lovely images of death and destruction, of self mutilation – a march made for war, a piece of music fitting for them both. At any rate, it should be dissonant enough to make it impossible for her to comprehend where they're headed, or worse, follow where they've come from. It is essential that she not be able to trace her way back to him, because if she could, the police could, and that is something he refuses to let occur. He sticks his head out of the window while he drives, wind whipping his hair as he swerves down the vacant country roads, smiling like some idiotic puppy. He speeds along, playing road-hog with the few other motorists he comes across, and slow-sally with the ones that come up right behind them. He likes it when they try and pass – he doesn't speed up, he doesn't slow down, but let's them zoom by just so he can see their expressions when they catch a glimpse of him behind the wheel. Whatever they were expecting, it's never him, and he just loves to see them silently gasp and quickly avert their eyes before pulling out ahead and disappearing off into the horizon at a momentum that shows their blatant panic.

When The Joker reaches his destination he pulls over. The road is empty and the sun has almost completely set. Twilight brings the mosquitoes and the fireflies, a peculiar mix of beauty and ugliness. Deep forest brush crowds either side of the street, and as he steps out he inhales, taking in the fresh, crisp sent of pine.

Martha Aiken jumps when the trunk pops open. Her head is reeling from the noise, and she is dizzy from the swerving. Disorientation makes her legs wobbly, and when he hauls her to her feet in one firm jerk she is barely able to stand up. She holds her breath as he removes her blindfold for what she can only hope is the last time, and when her eyes hit him they meet the clown mask instead. Bozo incarnate, an ugly thing that stinks of cheap Halloween rubber, something he's put on in-between pulling over and letting her out. She recognizes it apart from the others, from that night so very long ago, when she was taken from her bedroom in the darkness by him and his pack of rouges.

"I came in first." He says behind the mask, voice muffled slightly. "I picked the lock and opened the door, Martha. I came in first and put the chloroform over your mouth."

She nods, knowing it's true and accepting it all with one small movement of her head. Her hands are bound with string, the same purple yarn that made up his scarf. She looks at the mask and supposes it must be for security reasons – no kiss goodbye means no relapse of captivity. A smart move, although somewhat upsetting in a strange and disconcerting way.

"It's only fitting it should be me who does this last part." He adds quietly, and she can tell he's smiling even behind the poorly painted rubber. A false smile, no doubt.

He withdraws a small apple peeler from his coat pocket and turns her about-face. He kneels down behind her and works on cutting through the yarn.

She holds her breath and feels the yarn fall away from her wrists. Every mental instinct she has screams for her to run, but she remains rooted to the ground, patiently waiting for his next sentence.

"I'm not a bad guy, Martha. Do you think I'm a bad guy?" He asks her softly as he rounds her. "I don't think I am. I don't think bad and good are really valid options in this kind of situation, because if you consider things, you're just as bad as I am really. I mean, if 'bad' were a valid label."

He barely catches her mumble "The destruction of the universe is inevitable."

"Did you fake it?" He hisses, "With me? In the wine cellar? _Did you_?"

Her response is immediate.

"No."

His face dips just the once. "I believe you."

"I wouldn't lie to you about that."

"Yes, that's why I believe you." He snaps back, making her flinch.

"Would you let me again?"

"Yes."

"Where do you want to be?"

Martha is rousing and she thinks that she wants to be no place that she's previously been, and that if her cage is broken she won't fly home, and if she can't stay then she'll go some place _new__._

"What would you have done? If I was just another customer at the bank? If I had acted normal and pretended not to be crazy? If I really _had _been just another –"

"I would have looked right past you. You're so unlike anybody – anything I've ever experienced. I hate you for that. I hate you for being unique."

"You won't forget me." There's a hint of promise to this statement.

"I know."

"Do you hate me?" It sounds like he is sincerely interested.

"No." She says after a moment.

A touch of urgency in his tone as he asks her "Do you love me?"

"Have you ever been loved?" She counters. "Keep in mind that love is not fear or reversion, or obedience."

He bristles, patience suddenly gone. "Have _you_ ever been loved? Just answer the question, Martha. Do you love me or not?"

"I don't think so. Whatever it is I feel for you is indescribable. It can't be named."

"Try to name it." He demands, sounding both vexed and desperate.

"It's irrelevant now." Says Martha.

He strikes out, fist stopping inches from her cheek.

"_Try_." He seethes.

The answer comes not from fear but out of pity. Even with the mask on, she can tell that he is beside himself, more confused than even she must be.

"I think it's . . . Something like the way Buck felt for John Thorton, in 'Call of the Wild'." She begins, trying her best to classify it. She feels incredibly silly, comparing herself to a dog, but in truth it's the best example she can find. "Or the way he feels for any of the men in that story. First you caught me, then you broke me, but I wasn't _quite_ broken. I licked your hand but I still wanted to bite it. And then, I don't know. I got used to you? No, that's not it. I could never get used to you. But there was something about you. You protected me, maybe that was it. Maybe you hypnotized me a little bit at a time. I don't know, but in the end I was torn apart between wanting to stay with you and wanting to go my own way."

The speech, containing things she would never have said, things banned from her conscious mind, comes from some hidden part of her. The voice with which she speaks, unabashed and proud, is that of the actress.

She pauses to inhale. Stoic, he listens.

"In the end John Thorton dies." She says gravely. "He has to die because otherwise Buck would never leave him. I guess I stopped caring in the end because the call of freedom was just too intense for me." She concedes. It is a divulgence that makes her shiver. "More intense than you."

Forgetting to bite back her anger, she adds "Should I feel privileged to have known you, to have been the fish caught on your hook? To have slept with you? Does it even _matter_ now?"

He gives himself a moment to let that sink in. Pattern is a thing blindly sought out by Martha Aiken. Speaking to her in the delicatessen dinning room, pressing up against her in the booth as she wept, The Joker had found an important one for Martha – control through planning. She let him see this in her because his own obsessive behavior bordered on it, or so she theorized, but she gave up trying to analyze him early on in their relationship. He imagined she had labeled his an impossible mind to master. Nevertheless, her escape attempt, almost successful had it not been for his scrupulous cunning, was driven by her need for control.

Remembering the actress's wise words now, Martha Aiken comes to understand that only those who have no control seek it out so compulsively. She had made her last weak effort to plan, to regain control, but in trying to regain it she had lost it entirely by allowing The Joker to ravage her. And what was worse, she had enjoyed the feel of her own defeat. That riveting sensation of him inside her had been earth-shattering. Her begrudging of the very real injustices she had suffered at The Joker's hands was charged with the anger at herself that she could never properly acknowledge. She could not forgive herself for failing in her attempts to achieve control, and she could never allow herself to fully comprehend her feelings for The Joker, and the fact that she could not entirely break down her behavior doomed her all the more into pitiful self-disgrace.

He sighs grimly. "No." And he begins to pace. "What do you think we're doing out here? Let's hear your guess?"

Choosing to try and be optimistic despite the circumstances, she picks the most hopeful option. "You're moving me?"

The Joker mimics the sound of a game-show buzzer. "Wrong! Try again."

"You're going to kill me." She tries, thinking of the actress.

He chuckles at her naivety.

"Do you know what I'm going to do with you, Martha?"

"I never know what you're going to do, Mister Joker."

"I'm going to make a sacrifice."

The word is a knife that stabs her. She starts to get a clearer picture of the evening's probable events.

"For the sake of the heist, I'm going to sacrifice you." He chuckles giddily. "It's appropriate for the crime, don't you think?"

"I suppose so. But define sacrifice."

The sound of his tongue wetting the corner of his mouth from behind the rubber mask is muffled.

"I'm going to let you go, Martha." The announcement leaves her speechless, and she instantly understands why he used the word 'sacrifice'. She waits for him to continue. "If you go to the police –"

Martha quickly cuts him off. "I wouldn't. Never."

He nods again. "Good girl."

A beat as she brings her freed hands around to look at them, staring at the veins by her scars as she clenches her fingers tightly together. These hands held him not more than ten hours ago, and looking from the old wounds to his mask she notes that he holds her in high regard, and that she resents him for it.

"What do I do now?"

She feels incredibly stupid for asking, but what is more disheartening is that she really has no idea where to go from here.

"I suggest you leave, Martha." He tells her, and takes several steps away. "You do want to go, don't you? You certainly gave me that impression last night."

"I – " She starts, unsure of how to finish. It's almost over now and she is so _close_. So close to earning the freedom she has tried so hard to gain, that she has surrendered her dignity for. Why can't she move? She deliberates on apologizing to him for the acts committed in the wine cellar and eventually decides against it. He waits until, finally, she whispers "I can't. I don't know how."

"Would you prefer I shoot you?" He asks, pointing to the car. "There's a gun on the passenger's seat. Just give me two seconds and I'd be happy to –"

"No!" She screams, loud enough to scatter several crows from the canopy overhead. "No." She says again, approaching him.

He stands stock-still as she pulls the mask from his face and tosses it aside to reveal a resigned expression devoid of makeup. She frowns, wishing it had been a real smile along with the carved one. They stand together, eyes locked. He becomes aware of how cold he is. Now that the sun has gone down the breeze has turned brisk, and he thinks about how warm she felt when she was on top of him, surrounding him. He remembers her treachery and grasps that there is no punchline for this joke. His eyes narrow, and all the seething hatred from that night coils in his stomach like a caged viper waiting to strike. Still, he bides his time.

"I don't want you any more. I'm done with you. If you stay with me, I'll grow comfortable again, and then you'll betray me and my self esteem will plummet and I won't get _anything done_." Broods The Joker, scowling. "And _that_, my dear Martha of the big shiny bank downtown, that is really bad for business." He teases, visibly angst-ridden.

"Then mark me." She demands, reaching for the apple peeler. "That's what you do with a dog, isn't it? With a stray animal? Brand me so I'll remember. So we'll both remember, and maybe some day when the planets align . . . "

She trails off, leaving the suggestion open-ended.

He jerks away, at the same time snatching her hand and dragging him into her. He spins her so that he's pressing up against her, pinning her to the side of the car.

She holds her breath, waits.

The kiss is cruel and painful, with him biting hard enough to draw blood, but she doesn't pull away or struggle. In fact, she shoves herself into it with such ferocity that it makes The Joker moan openly over her parted lips. Dressed in his shirt from the night before, she is still naked from the waste down, and the wetness begins to pool at her center almost immediately. She squirms under him, trying to get a hand free to unbutton her shirt – his shirt, theirs.

The words of the actress echo in her ear.

She can't understand why she would want him again – the last time had been for a purpose, the seduction had taken place in order to ensure her freedom, and when the attempt had failed she had found herself debased and guilt-ridden. So why now should she want him inside of her again, when she had already been granted the freedom she so craved? When she was sure it wasn't a joke, that he thoroughly meant to release her?

_The destruction of the universe – _

The sex had been explosive, but had it turned her somehow? Was such a thing even possible?

_– is inevitable_.

Breathless, he manages to pull away from her.

"John Thorton has to die. He has to, for the dog to live freely." He recites, pained. "Do you want to kill me, Martha? Did you want to, down in the wine cellar?"

He is manic, laughing and tortured and struggling with himself. At this moment in time he is not The Joker, he is just a man whose face is scared and whose perception is so horrifically distorted he can not help but to corrupt the section of space and time he occupies.

"Yes." Is her blunt reply.

Eyes squeezed shut he holds her against the car, contradicting himself as he tells her to go, leave, that this was what she wanted, that freedom was why she hid the gun and that now she doesn't have to try and trick him again, she can just _go_, that he wants her – _needs_ her to go. She takes a moment to realize that he is begging, actually _begging_, and in that moment her heart bleeds for her solicitous, sadistic captor.

In a move that some might consider foolish, she brings her lips to his ear and whispers "I want you, though."

His eyes pop open and Martha gapes. Seeing the affection, the strange fondness in the eyes of the man who's volatile mood had always remained a mystery to her, it is far too jarring to disregard. Lightly, she brings her lips to his in a sensitive, affectionate kiss, the first of it's kind shared between them.

It's something in-between pure love and utter hatred.

The request is made again; "Mark me."

The Joker sighs sweetly and leans into another kiss, this one far more tender than any previously given by him. He slowly undoes his trousers with the one free hand, holding both Martha's left wrist and the apple peeler with the other. As his trousers drop to the ground she catches a glimpse of him, rock hard and tempting in his size, before he positions himself over her and starts to spread her legs. She takes him in her loose hand as she had the night before and he starts to say something, but the words die in his mouth as she focuses on the more sensitive bits of his hardened length, gently massaging the head before spitting in her hand and spreading the saliva over his shaft. He trembles at the sleekness as she begins to work on him, fevered strokes causing him to buck involuntarily.

The sun has set and the world is dark. The road beside them is empty, and they are alone in their own, private place.

He brings his opposite hand down to that moistened spot between her legs, eyes on her and unmoving as he rubs at her sensitivity for several long minutes before sliding two nimble digits into her. She tilts her head back against the cold metal behind her, sucking air sharply through her teeth with each motion of his digits. Again, his knowledge of how to please her goes unmatched, and as he arches his fingers inside her she whimpers and continues to stroke him, hoping to elicit in him the kind of frenzy he is causing in her. Withdrawing his fingers, he swats at her hand and she removes it from him. He turns her gently to face against the car, breasts pushing up against the glass of the back side window as he enters her.

A pause and then he begins. There is no steady build-up. He pumps into her unabashed, knowing this is the final time he will ever get to do so, her cries escalating rapidly in strength until her body seizes in silent desperation. Even then, he keeps thrusting, face red, eyes half-lidded and his lips parted slightly as he grinds away into her.

The Joker does not often feel empathy. The emotion is a foreign one to him, but on very rare occasions he has been known to express a small amount of compassion. He is being compassionate now, in both his physical and mental actions – although he does not entirely want to be. Something alien has taken over him; instinct maybe, or something that used to be a part of him that he thought he cut away when he gave himself the scars. In either case, the end result will be pleasant enough, so he decides to starve his mental agitation and just enjoy it.

It's over very quickly.

Too quickly, for both of them.

The end leaves him slumped up against her, pressing her into the cool metal of the car door with him panting slightly and rubbing his nose into the crook of her neck. Time does not exist here, and Martha Aiken is torn between wanting it to change, and wishing that it wouldn't.

She stares off into the forest sleepily, watching the fireflies dance. The trees are very still, and she feels sated and satisfied with The Joker resting against her back, his member still thick and heavy just inside her opening. She focuses on the mingled sound of their breathing and the chirping of the crickets, and thinks she could stay this way forever.

Minutes pass, and slowly she feels him ease away, withdraw from her. She hears him pull his trousers back up and adjust himself. It's surreal, this last exchange.

She turns to face him. His cheeks are flushed and his eyes are on the ground. He won't look at her, even though he is still quite close, and she reaches out for him, the remnants of their act leaking down her inner thigh. He seems small and lost then, like a sad child, and she hugs him while he remains stony and unmoving. She feels the rise and fall of his chest, hears him sigh and then his hands are wrapping back around her midriff and pushing under her shirt to feel her bare back. And he's shuddering, laughing again, erratically repeating the word _go_ in-between fevered gasps as his mouth nestles against her forehead.

She feels like a dog being told to run away by it's master, and part of her hates that. But another part of her feels happy, almost relieved, to have ever belonged to somebody in the first place, and to be allowed to go now. She is his, and will be forever, and while the thought partially elates her, she has no idea how she'll feel about what they've done together once she's been away from him for a good amount of time. Perhaps his memory will sour in her mind, or perhaps it will bloom into something more, something unique to anything or anybody else that's happened in her life. Either way, it will remain a memory preserved.

She pulls herself away, understanding that she must leave, absolutely must, or she will never get another chance, and if she were permitted would follow him to his certain doom. She loathes him for this.

"Come with me." Martha pleads.

He rolls his eyes. "Ordinarily I'm a risk-taker. I revel in risk, as a matter of fact. But I'm playing this one pretty close to the chest, Martha. It needs to happen. Sorry."

"No, you could still come. The men could do it without you and I could take you with me. I could hide you." She implores. "You don't need to do the bank. You don't need to, not really. What would somebody like you do with all of that money anyway? And – And even if you got revenge on the men that gave you those scars, on the ones that killed your family . . . What then? What would you do afterwards?"

It was true he had not thought that far ahead. When all was said and done, once he had broken Gotham and unmasked the Batman, once he had proved to society that all men were mad and he was normal in his madness, where would he go from there?

Perhaps, perhaps afterward, after everything he could –

With the sting of her brokenhearted gaze over his face she tugs incessantly at his hand, and his soul.

No, he thinks, and wrenches away from her.

He is an unstoppable force, and he has not quite met with a truly unmovable object, but were she to remain there, with him, the distraction would be overwhelming. He might begin to develop real emotion, proper feelings, and act sanely. Were she to remain with him he would be far too close to stopping; his ability to burst the bounds of artifice and create art that bleeds had to come from somewhere. Imagination needed roots, and while she gave him this giddy feeling of inspiration, he could not allow her to be those roots. Besides, she had been ambling through his fun-house mind with an unshakable comfort for some time now; better to cut the umbilical, let her loose. Poor girl deserved it, after all.

Martha was still speaking, still begging.

"If you come with me, we can –"

He puts a finger against her lips, cutting her off.

"You think you're so smart, don't you?" He begins haughtily. "Well I'm smart too. I've had so many psychiatrists try to analyze me that it's almost comical. You don't go through all that without picking one or two things up, Martha." He spits, making her wince.

"A little bit of subject knowledge to fair thee better. For instance, do you know what _this_ is called? This undeniable thing that's between us now?" He points back and forth between them wildly, "I mean, besides the fancy psychiatric names. Helsinki, Stockholm, besides those. Do you know what's behind it all?"

Martha shakes her head.

Doing his best to parrot the stereotypical academician, he continues. "According to the _doctors_ it's evolutionary, well partially evolutionary. Any egg-head with a white coat will tell you that the mind is a complex little machine, made so by natural selection and man's affinity to solve adaptive problems. It's all to do with natural selection, Martha. As a matter of fact, one of the main adaptive problems faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors, particularly the _female_ ones, was being abducted by outsiders. By strange men, like you see in the movies. They would come in the night and drag them away by their hair. Well, the women, they had a choice in these situations – fight back and risk being killed for their disobedience, _or_ . . . adapt to survive."

He pauses a moment for dramatic effect.

"What's so wrong with what you did to me, Martha? You adapted to survive. You shed your polite exterior and you fought back. I mean, I wish you hadn't, I would have liked to have had you around – permanently, that is. But part of me is proud of you, Martha. You proved my point. You achieved enlightenment!" He exclaims happily.

"You forgot one."

"Oh?" He pipes, perking an eyebrow, "Did I?"

"You forgot Lima Syndrome – when captors develop sympathy for their hostages." Martha explains quietly, the last of her outrage seeping through to hunt for closure. "Can you attend for your own actions, Mister Joker? You could have pushed me off of you after I had the wine on our _first date_. You could have knocked me out and let me go right then and there. And if you had your suspicions about our little arranged agreement, why not just end it there? Kick me out, end my life. What gave you the right to keep me? What gave you the right to _keep me__for yourself?_ You didn't even _ask me_if I wanted to stay. I don't think you can stand to be apart from me. I think you'll miss me when I'm gone."

He throws his head back to cackle boisterously, voice carried far by the breeze. "Is that a joke? If it's not a joke then I don't want to hear it, Martha. You're terrifically unfunny when you want to be. I hate that about you."

She blinks at him, weary. "Fine . . . I'll shut up."

"Much obliged." And he thanks her with one last kiss, quick and light under the rustling branches of the wind-blown pines.

Lost in the deep black of his mellow eyes, she barely notices the sting of the apple peeler as he soothingly slides it across her right wrist, using part of the old scar to carve the letter J into her bare flesh.

His brand, her mark.

When he pushes her away she looks down at the cut, deep and red and beautifully painful, and in that instant acknowledges that he loves her in his own misguided way, and that the sacrifice of setting her free is his to bare.

No farewells are said.

Biting keeps the words at bay as they struggle to slither free like snakes under a stone. Nothing else is said whatsoever.

Martha Aiken does not watch The Joker get back into the car, and makes it a point to ignore the start-up of the engine despite how thunderous it sounds. She does, however, watch him drive away, staring off at the horizon until the speck on the line disappears and she is undoubtedly alone.

She wonders if he watched her shrink in his rear-view mirror.

The walk toward Metropolis is a long one. The sun comes up as she plods along the ditch, blood dripping from her wrist and leaving a meager trail. But eventually she catches a ride with a random motorist who is kind enough to wipe the dried blood from her arm and bandage her wound with a piece of cloth. Conversation is sparse between herself and the stranger. When he asks her if she is hurt and wants to go to the police station or the hospital, she simply shakes her head. When he asks her how she got the scar, all she can do is smile and lie. The stranger gives her a spare pair of trousers and volunteers to dispose of her shirt – The Joker's shirt, but she politely refuses, saying she'd prefer to keep it. When he asks her where she wants to go, she quietly corrects him.

"Where do I want to be, you mean? I don't know."

"I can take you anywhere." Offers the stranger.

"Not Gotham, please. Not Gotham."

In the end she winds up in a homeless shelter on the edge of Metropolis.


End file.
